Sputnik Sweetheart
K is an elementary-school teacher in Tokyo who has been in love for years with his best friend Sumire, a disheveled twenty-two-year-old aspiring novelist who lives on dried toast and phone calls to K at three in the morning. Sumire has never been in love with anyone until, unexpectedly, she falls for an older woman named Miu, a cool, elegant wine importer who takes her on as a personal secretary. Traveling with Miu on a buying trip to a small Greek island, Sumire simply disappears, vanished, Miu tells K when she calls him from overseas in the middle of the night, like smoke. Haruki Murakami's 1999 novel, short for him and almost entirely domestic in scale, is a careful ghost story about queer desire, one-sided love, and the partner inside every person who never quite comes back.
What you might want to know about Sputnik Sweetheart
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
An elementary school teacher loves his friend Sumire, who falls hopelessly for an older businesswoman named Miu. After Sumire flies with Miu to a small Greek island and disappears, the narrator goes after them.
Sputnik Sweetheart was written by Haruki Murakami, originally published in Japanese in 1999. The English translation by Philip Gabriel was released in 2001.
Sputnik Sweetheart is one of Murakami's shorter novels, around 220 pages, and stylistically clearer than his longer works. Most readers find it accessible while still containing his trademark elliptical mystery.
Sputnik Sweetheart is 240 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Sputnik Sweetheart takes most readers 4 to 5 hours to finish.
Sputnik Sweetheart is a standalone novel by 村上春樹, not part of a series.
Sputnik Sweetheart is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
