A Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Financial Times, Library Journal, LitHub, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
"Exhilarating ... magical." –
The Washington Post "Some novelists hold a mirror up to the world and some, like Haruki Murakami, use the mirror as a portal to a universe hidden beyond it." –
The Wall Street Journal "[Murakami] is as masterful as ever." –
Houston Chronicle "A spellbinding parable of art, history, and human loneliness." –
O, The Oprah Magazine "The product of a singular imagination." –
San Francisco Chronicle "Expansive and intricate." –
The New York Times "Beguiling. . . . Murakami is brilliant." –
The Guardian "Dazzling. . . . [Murakami] reveals how an artist sees the world." –
Entertainment Weekly "[A] sprawling, uncanny epic. . . . A time-traveling tale of loss, longing, and the creation of art–with an ample dash of Murakami's trademark deadpan humor." –
Vanity Fair "A perfect balance of tradition and individual talent. . . . Murakami dancing along 'the inky blackness of the Path of Metaphor' is like Fred Astaire dancing across a floor, then up the walls and onto the ceiling." –
The Spectator "A surreal, world-altering epic punctuated by art, literature and history." –
Time "[Murakami] once more explicates the seemingly impossible with such thorough, exacting conviction to make believers of us all." –
The Christian Science Monitor "No other author mixes domestic, fantastic and esoteric elements into such weirdly bewitching shades. . . . Just as [Murakami] straddles barriers dividing high art from mass entertainment, so he suspends borders between east and west." –
Financial Times "[
Killing Commendatore] marks the return of a master." –
Esquire "The complex landscape that Murakami assembles in
Killing Commendatore is a word portrait of the artist's inner life." –
The Times Literary Supplement "Fascinating. . . . Drawing on Buddhist spiritualism, metaphysics and magical realism–not to mention Lewis Carroll–
Killing Commendatore finds its narrator enmeshed in a singular philosophic adventure." –
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "Enthralling." –
Forward "Murakami beautifully captures the evanescence of inspiration." –
Vulture "Its size, beauty, and concerns with lust and war bring us back to the vividness and scale of [Murakami's] 1997 epic,
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.'' –
The Boston Globe "Lovely and strange." –
Bustle "Wild, thrilling. . . . Murakami is a master storyteller and he knows how to keep us hooked. . . . What makes his voice so distinctive, and so captivating, is the mix of precise observation, clarity and deadpan humour." –
The Sunday Times (London)