Enter the Haruki Murakami World

Perhaps one of the books which brought Murakami to the forefront of global authors. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is set in a bizarre, magical-realistic Tokyo, where a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of the city.

He meets a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran. What gives?

According to the NYT, "Wind/Pinball affords the reader a rare glimpse behind the curtain of a mysterious creative process, repeating the familiar story of how his aspirations as a novelist were born watching a game of baseball, that national pastime to which both Japanese and Americans can lay equal claim."

These two-in-one novellas precede all his famous works, and if you're a hardcore Murakami fan, you'll be able to see how his writing style has honed and changed over the years.

Murakami's 12th work of fiction is darkly entertaining and more novella than novel. Taking place over seven hours of a Tokyo night, it intercuts three loosely related stories, linked by Murakami's signature magical-realist absurd coincidences.

But this Tokyo is darker, featuring themes of loneliness and alienation. And for those who are unfamiliar with his work, this may be the perfect appetiser.

The plot is simple: Hajime meets and falls in love with a girl in elementary school, but he loses touch with her when his family moves to another town. He drifts through high school, college, and his 20s, before marrying and settling into a career as a successful bar owner. Then his childhood sweetheart returns, weighed down with secrets.

Murakami gives us a dizzying, intoxicating look this time round, with lashes of lost love, passion and regret. Complex love triangles and relationships might seem like a cliched topic, but Murakami's handle of the language and plot makes it a breath of fresh air.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World draws readers into a narrative particle accelerator in which a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is simultaneously cooler than zero and unaffectedly affecting, a hilariously funny and deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.