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A Wild Sheep Chase

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A Wild Sheep Chase

By: Haruki Murakami, Alfred Birnbaum
Narrated by: Dexter Galang
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

A marvelous hybrid of mythology and mystery, A Wild Sheep Chase is the extraordinary literary thriller that launched Haruki Murakami's international reputation.

It begins simply enough: a 20-something advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend and casually appropriates the image for an insurance company's advertisement. What he doesn't realise is that included in the pastoral scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man in black who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences. Thus begins a surreal and elaborate quest that takes our hero from the urban haunts of Tokyo to the remote and snowy mountains of northern Japan, where he confronts not only the mythological sheep, but the confines of tradition and the demons deep within himself. Quirky and utterly captivating, A Wild Sheep Chase is Murakami at his astounding best.

©1982 Haruki Murakami (P)2020 Penguin Audio Action & Adventure Fiction Genre Fiction International Mystery & Crime Literary Fiction Metaphysical & Visionary Mystery Mystery, Thriller & Suspense World Literature Magic Fantasy

Critic Reviews

"A Wild Sheep Chase has the conventional hull of a thriller - a quest, a mystery, an extraordinary woman, and plenty of elegant duress - but its fantastic superstructure transforms it into something quite different...a science fiction fantasy, a romance, a metaphysical tease, or a dramatisation of philosophical ideas." (Independent)
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I’ve enjoyed many of Murakami’s works over the last 20 years. I found this to be lighthearted and quirky. ultimately it is lacking the edginess of his best works such as The wind up bird chronical, Kafka on the shore or 1Q84. The story is just not as grippinng as these great works which I have listened to many times over.

Not Murakami at is best

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Storyline is pretty intriguing. The narration needs a lot of improvement,, monotone, flat, lack of emotion.
I can’t even finish the whole story.

Disappointing

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Classic murakami.
Surreal and supernatural with the cadence of a gentle stream pooling into ponds.
Narration lets it down imo.

An average performance of a classic story

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