Fairly quintessential Murakami. Now I'm pretty jaded with him (post-1Q84), but at the time this was one of the first I read, and so was still very much being lead into new vistas of weird, postmodern lit tendencies, in which M played a pretty key role. Actually part 3 of a 4 part cycle of which the first two are wildly out of print, and I think the final sequel was even better. Stands alone regardless.