The Clockwork Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami Automatic translate

Murakami is still my favorite writer. I slowly read most of his novels. It can be read like a dessert, after some boring book, for example, the novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Garcia Marquez. Until now, all my expectations from the works of Haruki Murakami have been met. Some novels were better than the rest, but they were all in the "5" rating area. You can only attribute “Well done!” From a grateful reader in my face for individual books in a school manner.

The Clockwork Bird Chronicles is inferior to all previously read works of the author, which is strange to me. This voluminous novel in three books Murakami wrote already in the "mature" creative period. And I have left from reading a slight disappointment and the desire to put the first "4" -ku in the diary of a round honors student Haruki Murakami.

Could it not be from the satiety from the novels by Murakami? I think no. Nevertheless, the matter is precisely in the novel itself. It seems that there is everything: a hero in mild depression, music, a little cooking and a lot of mysticism. It would seem that there is everything that I like in his works, but some zest is missing. Maybe the novel turned out to be boring, with insufficient dynamics. Not to express exactly, there is only a general impression, which is noticeably inferior to all the previous ones.

The volume of the Clockwork Bird Chronicles is worthy of its famous 1Q84. Also broken into three books. Usikawa connects them - the hero of an unpleasant appearance, but for some reason provokes sympathy with me. He is not as brightly represented in Chronicles as in 1Q84, but since I read the novels in the reverse order, Usikawa looked like a native, albeit episodic character.

The novel is full of mysticism, like many other books by Murakami. The fight is against "evil." This time, "evil" fell between the hero of Toru Okada and his wife Kumiko. Strange heroes against the background of Japan in 1984, which sends me, again, to "1Q84" and the connection of these voluminous works is already becoming obvious. Many inserts from 1939, the historical conflict between Japan and the USSR and 1945 - the defeat of the Kwantung Army and the fall of the military regime of Japan.

A very interesting view of the conflict between the USSR and Japan from the Japanese Murakami. He writes about the unenviable position of prisoners of war in Soviet camps. They work in coal mines and die like flies. The cruelty of the Stalinist regime is the same for friends and foes. For some reason, I still thought, and it was rather suggested to me by Russian and Soviet sources, that the attitude towards the captured Germans and Japanese was much better than the opposite. From the point of view of Japanese history, the cruelty of the Red Army and Soviet camps was obvious. It is a question of executions and rape, of torture. Of course, in relation to the heroes of the novel, this is a fictional story, but in general, with regard to the defeat of the Japanese army in Manchuria, everything is not so heroic as it is sung in our textbooks.

Of course, I do not condone the Japanese occupation and do not take its side in conflicts with the USSR. There was also evil from imperial Japan. But I also became convinced again that it was not necessary to look at history one-sidedly. The fact that some are silent, others necessarily say. It is difficult to weigh everything and determine who is right, but to think and decide for yourself where it is, however, is always better than blindly believing only one side. Probably for me, this has become the central theme of the novel. This principle of versatility of the truth is obvious, but it is useful to confirm it for yourself once again.

There is an opinion that could also affect the "boring" perception of the novel. The publication I read was not translated by Kovalenin, the recognized master of Russian translations Murakami, but by Ivan and Sergey Logachevs. When I bought the book, I was looking for the translation of Kovalenin, but I didn’t find this for the Chronicles of Clockwork Bird. I don’t even know if there is a translation of it. But if appears, maybe I will re-read the novel again.

Despite the fact that the novel is inferior to the previously read works of Murakami, he is worthy to stand on a bookshelf.

A refreshing view of the history of the conflict between the USSR and Japan in 1939. It is interesting to look at this from the other side of the Japanese author.

Mysticism, the struggle against evil, thoughts about life and a place in it are the constant topics of Murakami. All this awaits an inquisitive reader on the page of the three books of the Chronicle.

Alina Veremeenko