First published in 1992 as国境の南、太陽の西(Kokkyō no Minami, Taiyō no Nishi)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, & 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.°°°InSouth of the Border, West of the Sun, the simple arc of a man’s life—with its attendant rhythms of success & disappointment—becomes the exquisite literary terrain ofHaruki Murakami’smost haunting work. When Shimamoto shows up one rainy night, now a breathtaking beauty with a secret from which she is unable to escape, the fault lines of doubt in Hajime’s quotidian existence begin to give way. And the details of stolen moments past & present—a Nat King Cole melody, a face pressed against a window, a handful of ashes drifting downriver to the sea—threaten to undo him completely. Rich, mysterious, quietly dazzling,South of the Border, West of the SunisHaruki Murakami’swisest & most compelling work.°°°Haruki Murakamiwas born in Kyoto, Japan, in1949. He grew up in Kobe & then moved to Tokyo, where he attended Waseda University. After college, Murakami opened a small jazz bar, which he and his wife ran for seven years.In1978Haruki Murakami was in the bleachers of Jingu Stadium watching a baseball game between the Yakult Swallows & the Hiroshima Carp when Dave Hilton, an American, came to bat. According to an oft-repeated story, in the instant that he hit a double, Murakami suddenly realized that he could write a novel. He went home & began writing that night.His first novel,Hear the Wind Sing, won theGunzou Literature Prizefor budding writers in 1979. He followed this success with two sequels,Pinball, 1973&A Wild Sheep Chase.