A near perfect novel about realistically flawed characters, this book hooked me right from the start. A book about music, adolescence, politics, literature, sexual misadventures and their associated complexities, life, death and love and longing and loss. This is my first Murakami novel and I can say with utmost faith that this author is a genius, a magician of words and narration with an unprecedented ability to express unspeakable emotions with unattainable depth of clarity!