Student Must-Read 4: Norwegian Wood
“I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.” What is it about Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood that captures the imagination of readers around the world? First, we meet Toru Watanabe, who is on a plane landing at Hamburg Airport. As the Beatles’ hit “ Norwegian Wood ” starts to play, much like the madeleine cake dipped in tea in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, the song transports Toru back to his memories of being 20 years old in 1960s Tokyo. Murakami’s achievement in this evocative novel is difficult to encapsulate in words. He creates a tone and feeling for being in your 20s: the struggles with love, the clash of emotions, and the shifts from melancholy to passion. Norwegian Wood unfolds within Toru’s mind like a mystery he is still trying to solve. At the beginning, Watanabe befriends classmates Kizuki and his girlfriend Naoko. But when Kizuki co
