Review
"The series comes as near to squaring various circles - popular / academic, 'good read' / 'classic Lit', novel / film of the book as any I know. And at best it goes a fair way towards reshuffling those categories and redrawing the boundaries. With the first volume, I was relieved. After two or three, I was hooked. The books are invaluable for gathering out-of-the-way or ephemeral comment from TV and radio interviews and the web as well as from literary reviews. Refreshingly upfront and up-to-date Given the space, there are remarkably balanced film/novel comparisons of the most well-known examples An important feature is the fully referenced bibliographies, including reviews and copious website addresses - the latter ranging from fanzines and authors' and publishers' own sites to academic discussion lists and online journals. In method as in subject matter, these guides move freely on the interface between print culture and multimedia. Highly finished and pleasantly handleable as books in their own right, they gesture accommodatingly to both words and worlds beyond. Taking the series as a whole, it also confirms two things: that narrative nowadays is generically highly hybrid and increasingly cross-media; and that an understanding of the processes of writing and reading 'contemporary classic' (or at least 'currently famous') fiction cannot be separated - yet must be distinguished - from the processes of making and marketing books and films." The Times Higher Education Supplement, May 31, 2002
Product Description
This is an excellent guide to Haruki MurakamiGÇÖs extraordinary novel. It features a biography of the author (including an interview), a full-length analysis of the novel, and a great deal more. If youGÇÖre studying this novel, reading it for your book club, or if you simply want to know more about it, youGÇÖll find this guide informative and helpful. This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years GÇô from GÇÿThe Remains of the DayGÇÖ to GÇÿWhite TeethGÇÖ. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question.
About the Author
Matthew Strecher teaches English and Japanese Literature at Toyo University in Japan.
