Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Haruki Murakami's 2013 novel sets aside the talking cats and parallel moons of his more surrealist work to write something quieter and almost realist. Tsukuru Tazaki was one of five inseparable high school friends in Nagoya, the only one without a color in his name, and the only one not destined, he believed, for greatness. During his second year of college the other four cut him out of their lives without explanation. Sixteen years later, a new girlfriend convinces him he can never fully love anyone until he finds out why. Tsukuru's pilgrimage takes him back to Nagoya and on to a Finnish lakeside, and Murakami uses the journey as a meditation on memory, the colors and sounds we attach to people, and the strange rhythm of long friendship. Spare, beautifully translated by Philip Gabriel, and one of his most accessible entry points.
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In his late thirties, Tokyo train station designer Tsukuru Tazaki is pushed by his new girlfriend to track down the four high school friends in Nagoya who suddenly stopped speaking to him sixteen years ago.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is a standalone, but readers familiar with Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart will recognize Murakami's themes of isolation, memory, and unresolved relationships. The book is one of his most realist works.
No. Compared to 1Q84 or The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is shorter, linear, and grounded in present-day Japan. It is often recommended as an entry point to Murakami.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage was written by Haruki Murakami.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is a standalone novel by Haruki Murakami, not part of a series.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
