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Killing Commendatore audiobook cover art

  • Killing Commendatore

  • A Novel
  • By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator, Ted Goossen - translator
  • Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
  • Length: 28 hrs and 27 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 21
  • Performance
    4.5 out of 5 stars 21
  • Story
    4.5 out of 5 stars 20

In Killing Commendatore, a 30-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 previously unseen 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 13-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna....

  • 5 out of 5 stars

  • A magical dream

  • By Lucifer Sunbeam on 10-16-18
The Elephant Vanishes audiobook cover art

  • The Elephant Vanishes

  • Stories
  • By: Haruki Murakami, Alfred Birnbaum (translator), Jay Rubin (translator)
  • Narrated by: Teresa Gallagher, John Chancer, Walter Lewis, and others
  • Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 91
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars 78
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars 79

With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.

Sputnik Sweetheart audiobook cover art

  • Sputnik Sweetheart

  • By: Haruki Murakami
  • Narrated by: Adam Sims
  • Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4.5 out of 5 stars 223
  • Performance
    4.5 out of 5 stars 205
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars 207

Haruki Murakami, the internationally best-selling author of Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, plunges us into an urbane Japan of jazz bars, coffee shops, Jack Kerouac, and the Beatles to tell this story of a tangled triangle of uniquely unrequited loves.

>A college student, identified only as "K" falls in love with his classmate, Sumire. But devotion to an untidy writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments until she meets Miu, an older and much more sophisticated businesswoman.

  • 5 out of 5 stars

  • Lonely?

  • By Bulent Basaran on 11-10-16
Men Without Women audiobook cover art

  • Men Without Women

  • Stories
  • By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator, Ted Goossen - translator
  • Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
  • Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4.5 out of 5 stars 425
  • Performance
    4.5 out of 5 stars 390
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars 391

Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all. Marked by the same wry humor that has defined his entire body of work, in this collection Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic.

  • 5 out of 5 stars

  • Murakami Being Murakami

  • By Jay Quintana on 05-10-17
South of the Border, West of the Sun audiobook cover art

  • South of the Border, West of the Sun

  • A Novel
  • By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel (translator)
  • Narrated by: Eric Loren
  • Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 367
  • Performance
    4.5 out of 5 stars 319
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars 322

Born in 1951 in an affluent Tokyo suburb, Hajime - beginning in Japanese - has arrived at middle age wanting for almost nothing. The postwar years have brought him a fine marriage, two daughters, and an enviable career as the proprietor of two jazz clubs. Yet a nagging sense of inauthenticity about his success threatens Hajime's happiness. And a boyhood memory of a wise, lonely girl named Shimamoto clouds his heart.

  • 4 out of 5 stars

  • A River of Unmindfulness

  • By Darwin8u on 10-12-13
After Dark audiobook cover art

  • After Dark

  • By: Haruki Murakami
  • Narrated by: Janet Song
  • Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 294
  • Performance
    4.5 out of 5 stars 203
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars 205

Here is a short, sleek novel of encounters, set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami's masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. At its center are two sisters: Eri, a fashion model slumbering her way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny's toward people whose lives are radically different from her own.

  • 3 out of 5 stars

  • Intriguing book, Poor Narration

  • By Ellen Clary on 07-27-08

Publisher's Summary

From the best-selling author of Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles comes this superb collection of 24 stories that generously expresses Murakami's mastery of the form.

From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and relentlessly entertaining. Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an iceman, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami's characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be closest of all.
©2006 Haruki Murakami (P)2013 Random House Audio

Critic Reviews

“A true miscellany [or] more like one of those overstuffed, career-spanning CD box sets…[But] the tales seem to speak with one, very seductive, voice. That voice, in each of these wildly varied excursions into the strange, dim territory of the self, says that someone named Haruki Murakami is still looking, quixotically, for something less fragile, less provisional than the usual accommodations we make do with on the road.” (Terrence Rafferty, New York Times Book Review)
"A virtuosic demonstration of Murakami's incredible range . . . thrilling, funny, sad, moving, scary--all at once. Since 1980, the year Haruki Murakami wrote his first short story, the Japanese author has been a walking definition of genius . . . He is a master of tone, and can manipulate a reader's curiosity at will, [and he] approaches the large subjects indirectly, through mood and bizarre occurrences, and always trusts his reader to be moved." (John Freeman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
"In this extraordinary new story collection by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, reality is ever in danger of breaking loose of its moorings . . . The inconsequential registers as significant in these wonderful stories as people struggle to figure out how to be, and what 'normal' means, if anything." (Joan Mellen, Baltimore Sun)

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic, just like how all Murakami books are

Amazing collection of short stories. While I prefer his novels, simply because I love his writing so much that I love the fact I can stay longer in a novel's unique reality than in a short story's, it must be said that these short stories were also a fantastic experience.

What fantastic voyages! What surreal experiences intertwined with moments that are instantly relatable! I find Murakami extremely brilliant and quotable, I have made countless Facebook status updates that are just quotes from his works. This short story collection is no exception, with plenty poignantly worded quotes that speak to me.

Those who have read Murakami's novels will recognize that one of the short stories is almost like an excerpt from one of his novels... I didn't look at publication years but I assume this short story collection came first. Perhaps the short story is what inspired the novel to come to be? If so, I wonder if any of the other short stories will blossom into full length novels someday.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

This author is usually creative and amazing but

This particular book of short stories was bland. I kept thinking I must be misunderstanding something.