In Killing Commendatore, a thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a strange painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist's home, and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors.
A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art - as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby - Killing Commendatore is a stunning work of imagination from one of our greatest writers.
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His books include Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, and 1Q84. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages and he has received many honours, including the Franz Kafka Prize. His most recent novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, sold one million copies in its first week of publication in Japan.
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