Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman and over 900,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle . Learn more

Buy New

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
or
Amazon Prime free trial required. Sign up when you check out. Learn more
Buy Used
Used - Good See details
Price: £2.71

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
   
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
 
 
Start reading Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman [Paperback]

Haruki Murakami
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
Price: £5.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £3.00 (33%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.
Want guaranteed delivery by Saturday, February 11? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition £5.69  
Hardcover --  
Paperback £5.99  
Audio, CD, Audiobook --  
Audio Download, Abridged £7.87 or Free with Audible.co.uk 30-day free trial
Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details.

Frequently Bought Together

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman + The Elephant Vanishes + After The Quake
Price For All Three: £17.96

Show availability and delivery details

Buy the selected items together
  • In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

  • The Elephant Vanishes £6.38

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

  • After The Quake £5.59

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions


Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought


Product details

  • Paperback: 448 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; Translated By P. Gabriel & J. Rubin edition (5 July 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0099488663
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099488668
  • Product Dimensions: 13.3 x 2.9 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 59,724 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Authors

Discover books, learn about writers, and more.

Product Description

Waterstone's Books Quarterly

'an engaging, likeable collection'

Sunday Telegraph

'The stories are delivered with a beguiling mix of grace and
succinctness'

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


 

Customer Reviews

21 Reviews
5 star:
 (10)
4 star:
 (4)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (4)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (21 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Short story collection up to Murakami's usual standard, 13 Dec 2007
This review is from: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Paperback)
This is Murakami's first proper short story collection in English since The Elephant Vanishes. After the Quake, though also a collection of short stories, is more of a coherent work, whereas these two collections draw from stories published from all periods of Murakami's career, and from many different collections in Japanese.

The publication dates of the stories are not given and, as Murakami says in his introduction (a nice touch), many of the stories have been significantly revised since their first publication. Thus, there is little coherence and tracing the author's development of style and themes is almost impossible, even with the aid of the bibliography in translator Jay Rubin's very interesting biography/literary study (also published by Vintage).

Murakami's short stories are very good, sometimes excellent, but it is in the sustained brilliance of his novels where his true value as a writer lies. The stories in here are, on the whole, up to Murakami's usual standard.

As in his novels, truly bizarre and unexplainable occurs in these stories. The most bizarre here is a talking monkey hiding in the sewers of a Tokyo suburb, but this is only one example. The more I read Murakami, the more I think this mystical, seemingly meaningful, content actually means nothing at all. This only marginally lessens its interest and mystery, though. Maybe one day I'll change my mind and be able unlock these conundrums (`like Zen koans', as one of the characters in this collection notes).

Throughout Murakami's work, a regularly re-occurring theme is things going missing without any explanation. It's no different in these stories. Sometimes it's things (name tags), often men (stockbrokers), usually women (girlfriends). Like one of the stories in The Elephant Vanishes, some of the stories here are the seeds of the writer's novels, fragments of them in a slightly different form.

Masters of the short story like Dahl, Fitzgerald and Hemmingway warrant a 5 for some of their collections, but there just isn't enough depth in these stories to warrant that kind of credit. They are like beautiful little sketches whose greatest power is to evoke a mood - nearly always one of wistful sadness - extremely powerfully. Don't expect them to mean anything, though, because they probably don't.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


47 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars a meander through a magical world, 8 Feb 2006
A writer that expresses perfectly the isolation and loneliness of the modern world, Murakami's short stories are like peering through a dozen windows into a world where fantasy and reality mix, seperate and blend together again. His talent lies in the ability to take the mundane and make it fantastic, offering us a peek into ordinary lives sprinkled with the kind of surreal conversations and events that make you look around you whilst in the street or on the bus and wonder what all these people around you are really like.
I can't read any of his work without seeing the world differently afterwards, and this collection i could read over and over. Impossible to pigeon hole, each story has it's own distinct mood, but in each the atmosphere persists; that the world has a beauty that, if we just scratch the surface off the everyday, will be revealed.
If you're new to Murakami, start here or with The Elephant Vanishes, if you're familiar with his writing you will need no persuasion.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Murakami story collection, 29 May 2011
This review is from: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Paperback)
A short story collection from one of my favourite writers. Each of these tales is completely unique and mysterious in its own way. And each one has a brilliant kernel of an idea. As I read more Murakami I think I am starting to get an idea of what I like about him. Firstly there's his imagery. For some reasons he seems to paint pictures in your mind that consist of only primary colours. There are always blue skies and green grass. There is a freshness to his scenery that is absent from other peoples' work. Secondly there is his strange view of the world that has some consistency the more you read. In his fiction there are ideas of metaphysical bonds existing between not only humans but human inventions - things such as buildings, or clothes, or even names themselves. And these bonds seem to open up your mind to the possibility of some strange other world existing just beyond the dimensions of our own.

All of the stories in this collection are excellent and I guess you have to read them to understand why because trying to explain the plots is just too difficult. Suffice to say, if you like Haruki Murakami then you be sure to like this collection.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
 Go to Amazon.com to see all 53 reviews  4.3 out of 5 stars 
Were these reviews helpful?   Let us know
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews











Only search this product's reviews



Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums


Listmania!


Look for similar items by category


Look for similar items by subject


Feedback


Amazon.co.uk Privacy Statement Amazon.co.uk Delivery Information Amazon.co.uk Returns & Exchanges