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South of the Border, West of the Sun
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South of the Border, West of the Sun
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South of the Border, West of the Sun
Audiobook6 hours

South of the Border, West of the Sun

Written by Haruki Murakami

Narrated by Eric Loren

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Haruki Murakami is unquestionably Japan’s leading novelist with his many works – fiction and non-fiction – consistently reflecting contemporary Japanese life while, unusually, sustaining an international appeal through a deeply human perspective. South of the Border, West of the Sun is his seventh novel, written in 1992. Hajime tells the story of his relationship with Shimamoto, an unconventional girl, from their first meetings as children through to life as students. They drift apart, but come together years later when Hajime is married and a father of two. Are those former feelings of close friendship still real – real enough to upset a functioning family life? Or are they haunted by intense memories? And who is Shimamoto, and what has she become. South of the Border, West of the Sun is typically intimate, illusive, unpredictable and absorbing in a way that is uniquely Murakami.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 13, 2013
ISBN9781843798071
Unavailable
South of the Border, West of the Sun

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Reviews for South of the Border, West of the Sun

Rating: 3.839643061871282 out of 5 stars
4/5

1,849 ratings42 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I mostly liked it, but I think maybe the author thinks his main character is tragic and relatable, when actually he's a self-involved jerk.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Seems like Murakami just can't stop writing about adultery? Nonetheless, this book was a good one. I was kept in suspense about whether or not i liked it until the very end. It was a very subjective decision and I don't know if anybody else would agree with me. I enjoyed this book because it takes the formula of a transformative moment and applies it early in the story - the moment happens, and then the rest of the novel explores what it is like to be in two realities at once, at home in none. The MC is very unlikable - and un-empathizable. Not that a MC has to be empathetic to be good, but, there are cases in which it is done well *coughDOSTOEVSKYcough*. In the end, it didn't matter though.

    This is one of Murakami's more human novels, and it applies his magical realism in a more grounded way that just works. This book is like Norwegian Wood if it didn't suck.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Most unlikeable protagonist ever, but good book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Eccellente al solito. Murakami è murakami. Eccellente anche il lettore
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Flashes of that Murakami brilliance but gee, this was among his most frustrating works.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    One of my favorite authors, but this narrator is not right for the material. Couldn’t get past the first chapter. Read it, skip the audio version.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Growing up as an only child in Japan was quite unusual, but Hajime had go used to not having other brothers and sisters around. He was attracted to Shimamoto, another of his age who was an only child. They spent many afternoons listening to her father’s record collection. His parent decided to move away and they lost contact. He had a girlfriend, Izumi, but they never got close and his attention was diverted elsewhere. He drifted around for a while ending up working for an educational publisher until one day he got caught in a storm and dashed undercover, there were two girls sheltering from the rain and it was there he met who was to become his soul mate and wife, Yukiko.

    Now in his late thirties, he is the owner and manager of two successful jazz cocktail bars and is happily married with two daughters. Life is good, but it is about to change once again because as he is sitting at the bar one night he realises that one of his customers is Shimamoto, the girl who haunted his teenage years and has been a figment of his dreams is now there, in his bar, and looking more beautiful than ever. Even though this is the moment that he has dreamt of so often, all that he has achieved is now going to be in jeopardy.

    I think that is one of my favourite of Murakami’s that I have read so far. It contains a lot of his familiar tropes, ideal if you are playing Murakami bingo (here). There is less magical realism in it as well, instead, it is firmly rooted in real life. He is not yet at the mid-life crisis point, and while he isn’t unhappy, he is not feeling happy either. The girl who he knew and once loved reappearing in his life once again is the catalyst to unravel what he thought was never going to change. There are elements of mystery in it too, another ex who appears in the same area he is living now who he glimpses through a window one day and Shimamoto who comes and goes like the wind and leaves no trace of her movements. Can thoroughly recommend this as I felt it was more readable than his other books.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    It’s very male in its perspective and gets too much into sex at certain places that seems unnecessarily graphic. The main character seems narcissistic and not too likeable and his treatment of women is very disturbing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It’s very absorbing, often annoying, and always thought provoking. I wondered where the story was going until I understood that that was the point.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Beautiful book. Love his imagery and philosophical journeys. ?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The narrating voice was perfectly matched to how I imagined Murakami's books to sound like
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an exquisitely bitter-sweet tale of a love that never dies and yet never really quite manifests itself either. When a childhood love suddenly comes back into his life, our narrator finds that he is haunted by a mysterious woman who's never really quite there. Filled with many of the recurring motifs Murakami seems obsessed with, reading him is like returning to talk to an intimate friend.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    While reading the book, I planned to rate it three out of five stars, as I was a bit dissapointed after reading other works by Murakami. It felt much more difficult to connect to the main characters as in, for example, Norwegian Wood. However, the two final chapters are so magnificently written, turned the story up side down, and contain so many delicious metaphors that I had to show some mercy and award it with four stars.

    Not my all-time Murakami favourite, but a strange and captivating (short) story that is hard to put down.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In his classic style, Murakami once again lures the reader with his dreamlike, lyrical prose into a story of love and loves. He weaves a fabric of past and present, duty and dream, yearning and honor. Hajimoto loves three women during his life, for different reasons, at different depths, and with different outcomes. How does one choose between fantasy and responsibility? How do we reconcile ourselves with the reality of our lives with the dream of what might have been? Murakami has a way of taking the reader into the very fabric of a character's being and wrapping us in that fabric so that we are warmed and reassured that being human is a confusing, yet survivable condition. Fantastic!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Murakami's straightforward novels have this quality to them. I tried to explain in my review of Norwegian Wood. They lack a signature strangeness and instead rely on an unusual way of telling a usual story. Loved it, as always.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Japan, 1963-1988Hajime blev født i 1951, i en fredelig by uden mange spor efter krigen. Hans far var soldat under krigen og måtte omkring en krigsfangelejr inden han kom hjem. Moren klarede sig også selv om hendes hus blev ramt af bomber og nedbrændte. Hajime er enebarn og hans opvækst var uden omvæltninger og da han tog til Tokyo for at læse på universitetet, troede han egentlig at alle fædre hver dag tog på arbejde hver morgen og at alle boede i små nydelige huse og enten havde hund eller kat. De fleste i hans folkeskole havde dog en eller to andre søskende og han følte det som en belastning at være enebarn. En af de andre i klassen, pigen Shimamoto, er også enebarn og de er forelskede i hinanden, dog uden at gøre andet ved det end at holde i hånd en enkelt gang. De kommer i hver sin forsætterskole og kommer gradvist væk fra hinanden.Den næste, han er forelsket i, hedder Izumi. Hun er hans kæreste i gymnasiet, men hun vil ikke gå længere end til at være nøgen sammen med ham en enkelt aften (som endda bliver afbrudt af hans moster). Der er en herlig historie om at Najime har købt kondomer af en ven, som selvfølgelig ikke holder mund og på et tidspunkt når historien til Izumi. Endnu mere pinligt er det at Najime mister sin mødom til Izumis kusine. Hun er et par år ældre, går på universitetet og har også en kæreste. Det forhindrer dog ikke at Najime og hende finder sammen og knalder på livet løs, når de kan finde tid og lejlighed. Izumi opdager det og bliver dybt såret. Najime består afgangsprøverne med fine karakterer, mens Izumi dratter ned på middelmådige karakter og kommer ind på et dårligere universitet.Najimes universitetstid er ret uinteressant. Han bliver færdig med en grad i litteratur og ikke pralende karakterer og får et kedeligt job. Han har pigebekendtskaber undervejs, men ikke nogen, han mener det alvorligt med. Da han er tredive møder han Yukiko og de bliver gift. Hans svigerfar foreslår ham at åbne en jazzbar og det bliver en stor succes. De får to børn og har bil og hus og lever godt. Han har småaffærer ved siden af, men kun en-, to- eller tregangs knald. En dag får han et postkort, der fortæller at Izumis kusine er død, 36 år gammel.Han kommer i et af bladene, fordi han har succes med sin jazzbar, der nu er blevet til tre, og en aften dukker Shimamoto op. Hun er nu en uovervældende smuk kvinde. De snakker lidt og så går hun igen. Det varer tre måneder før hun dukker op igen og han er ved at gå til imens.Senere forsvinder hun igen en tid uden at sige andet end at hun er væk. Da hun kommer igen, tager han hende med til familiens hytte i Hakone og de elsker natten lang. Hun siger at hun vil fortælle ham alt dagen efter, men i nat må han ikke stille spørgsmål. Han går ind på det og uden at blinke vil han opgive konen og sine to børn og være hendes i et og alt. Men næste dag er hun pist væk. Hendes væremåde er set i bakspejlet ret foruroligende. Han føler sig bagefter sikker på at det var hendes mening at dø og at tage ham med sig og at det egentlig var det hun spurgte om, da hun spurgte om han ville være hendes fuldt og helt.Hajimes kone Yukiko er dybt såret, men også stadig forelsket i ham og siger at han kan få al den tid, han måtte ønske, på at finde ud af om han vil forlade hende eller ej. Hvis han ikke vil have hende mere, skal han bare sige til og hun vil forsvinde uden at kræve noget som helst af ham. Hun vil intet vide om Shimamoto, blot at der er en anden og at han er forelsket i denne.Han er ikke i stand til at tage en beslutning, fordi Shimamoto er forsvundet. Men han og Yukiko begynder dog at snakke sammen og selv om de ikke deler soveværelse mere, fungerer de stadig som par, i alt fald udadtil og overfor børnene.Romanen slutter med at han siger at han gerne vil starte et nyt liv fra næste morgen, men gør han mon det?Haruki Murakami er født i 1949 og kan lige som Hajime godt lide jazzmusik. Gad vide hvor meget Haruki og Hajime ellers har til fælles.Glimrende roman, for selv om man ikke helt kan sætte sig i Hajimes sted, så er der bestemt en resonans. På en måde er det Akilles valg om igen. Vil man have et langt og trygt liv med kone og børn, eller vil man sætte det hele over styr for at prøve noget vildt. Hajime er ikke i tvivl, men Shimamoto tager alligevel ikke stikket hjem og det er jo en uventet og spændende slutning.Og en lille advarsel, den plade med Nat King Cole: "South of the border" findes ikke. Faktisk har han aldrig indspillet den.Husk nu: It's not real!
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    When I couldn’t read the whole 900 pages of 1Q84 I got determined to read some entire Murkami’s book and chose South of the Boarder, West of the Sun, only 200 pages. And human questionable sexual behavior was in it again. This time not only casual sex, but also platonic love with sexual fantasies only as well as steamy sexual affairs. For most of the book, the main protagonist – Hajime - was the only well described character of the book. Others were only sketchily mentioned, so I had no one to identify with, no one to feel for, no one to compel me to keep reading. I saw only an unpleasant person, who was hurting his loved ones; not even his regrets of his own reckless sexual behaviour made him more palatable to me. Then, close to the end of the book, Murakami finally portrayed in more depth another character – Hajime’s wife, and her suffering over her husband’s behavior made me think: this book is a clear lesson about how hurtful and inappropriate infidelity, steamy or otherwise, really is. Then again, I’m afraid some people will leave the pages of this book with an impression that casual sex, whether without or with love, is not a big deal.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Hajime is a self made man. He owns two piano jazz bars has an adoring wife and two wonderful children. But Hajime has a problem he cannot get the image of his close childhood friend Shimamoto from his mind. One day many years later a beautiful elegant lady sits drinking in one of his bars. As he closely scrutinizes this lone customer he suddenly realizes that this is none other than Shimamoto. From that moment on Hajime is totally besotted with her and realizes even though he is happily married, Shimamoto is the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with...So what happens when you have it all and temptation not only arrives but welcomes you openly with warm and loving arms.....Haruki Murakami in his addictive writing style shows a deep understanding of the human condition, the relationships that we form and the allurements that entice us. He shows a world that is deceptively simple and introduces characters that are always slightly flawed (but surely we are all flawed) . It is therefore very easy for the reader to associate with the players in this wonderfully readable novel...."We were the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to- be- acquired reality that would fill us and make us whole"......"Because everyone's seeking the same thing: an imaginary place, their own castle in the air, and their very own special corner of it."....."Things that have form will disappear. But certain feelings stay with us forever."...."Sometimes when I look at you I feel I'm gazing at a distant star"......"The special something I'd found ages ago in that melody was no longer there. It was still a beautiful tune, but nothing more. And I had no intention of lingering over the corpse of a beautiful song.".......Beautiful lyrical writing and highly recommended.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Sometimes I love Haruki Murakami. Sometimes he really falls flat for me. Even when I love him, there are parts of his books that make me roll my eyes. This book finally helped me figure out what is so exasperating about Mr. Murakami - he's obsessed with Manic Pixie Dream Girls. The term was coined by a writer for the AV Club to refer to "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures."Murakami uses a mix of MPDGs and what I consider his version of their flip side, Depressed Pixie Dream Girls. They're all eccentric and just too cute and unusual for their own good, and for some reason they all adore the completely dopey, lifeless blank slates that are Murakami's protagonists, but Murakami's depressed versions are melodramatically tragic and suicidal instead of bubbly.These women can often be spotted by the lack of their own story, and Shimamoto exhibits that perfectly in South of the Border, West of the Sun. She's mysterious, with a secret past and a dead baby and expensive clothes despite never having worked a day in her life. But do we ever discover anything about her? Does she have a story, or is she merely punctuating the main character's life with her presence? The only thing that was really driving me forward through the book was wanting to find out what her deal was, and all we find out is that she might really be a Pixie Dream Girl. Also, she can put her mouth around the main character's balls while laying her head on his navel, which is proof that either she really is a dream girl or else the translator had a bit of a hiccup here.Aside from that trope, Murakami pulled out another duo that I hate hate hate with a passion - grown man mooning over his girlfriend from his teen years, and people falling in love despite not knowing each other. These often go hand in hand, as the grown man will be in love with someone who is now also grown when he runs into her again, and yet he only knows who she was when she was 15. I can't stand it in John Cusack movies, and I really couldn't stand it here. The 37-year-old main character has never stopped thinking about the girl he last saw when they were 12, even though he's gotten married and had kids. It's presented as romantic and nostalgic and everything except the creepy immaturity it really is. And he admits to her when they meet as adults that he loves her even though he doesn't know anything about her except what she was like as a 12-year-old. It elicited the same reaction from me that Casablanca did when the main characters swore to never speak of their pasts and yet drooled declarations of love all over each other. If you love someone despite not knowing them, all you're really doing is loving yourself reflected in their eyes. Blech.Somehow this little 200-page book has elicited a review longer than most 500-page books get out of me, so I'll stop pissing off film lovers now and go wonder if the remaining Murakami books I have yet to read will meander from this MPDG, teenage-days nostalgia, or if they'll at least make it more fun like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle did.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I devoured this book. It's about past yearnings and lost opportunities, the difficulty of choosing your way in the world, how we're all incomplete, and even our best choices wind up damning and ruining us. It's about love.4 stars oc

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    In his newest book, South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami has changed styles yet again. He's moved on from the wonderful complexity of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles to telling the story of one man and the woman he has loved since they were both children. This is not to say that this is a simple story, this is also not to say that this is your regular love story, this is, after all, Haruki Murakami. His fiction is some of the finest around, and, while South of the Border, West of the Sun isn't as outstanding and complex as The Wind-Up Bird (one of my favorite novels), he is a master of the written word, who doesn't seem to ever make a literary misstep. His writing always draws me into another world, one where my mind is most definitely my own, but my thoughts are benignly controlled by the pace and whatever unknown qualities he has inhabited that writing with. It's always a pleasure to visit the world of Murakami. It's like a river: you never step into the same place twice; but it leaves your mind, instead of your feet, refreshed. (4/99)

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I have grown to love this book. When I first finished it, I thought, "meh." It wasn't quite the Murakami I knew and was looking for at the time. It's lacking a certain degree of weird. (There's some weird alright, but not the super crazy weird you might come to expect from Murakami.) With each passing month, however, I think about it more and more; it's slowly sinking in on deeper levels. Partially this is because the story itself is haunting and unresolved. On the other hand, I think it's also an example of Murakami at his best - balancing his surrealist, other-wordly imagination with his poetic simplicity. Just the right amount of weird, in other words.

    He's working with many of the same themes and character types - mysterious characters, heavy noir vibe, jazz, femme fatale, doomed love, zippy car ride, a finely shaped ear - but they're dialed back a bit. This, to me, ends up making them more potent and not relegated to the world of allegory and kitsch.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Most unlikeable protagonist ever, but good book.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I did not enjoy this book. I'm not sure if I didn't enjoy the writing style because I'm used to a completely different novel from the author or if I just hated the protagonist. Either way, I did not enjoy reading this. I kept hoping it would speed up or get better and it didn't. Not his best.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read this short, easy novel in two sittings. This book is more like Norwegian Wood, less like Murakami's more magical fiction, which I enjoy more. Not to say I didn't like the book - I did find it interesting enough to read all the way through quite quickly - but it didn't spark my imagination. There are some insightful moments when the main character comes to some conclusions about life, and I liked the ambiguous way the characters deal with right and wrong, but overall I definitely prefer the other books, such as Kafka on the Shore.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There is a quality about Murakami’s writing that always draws me in. No matter the story, I find myself being drawn into his narrative. They are generally people that do not have “Big Things” happening to them, yet he makes them people you want to learn about.I say that as introduction to stating that I enjoyed this book. And yet, some time after reading it, I have trouble recreating what I read. (Part of this may be that I read Murakami’s Norwegian Wood shortly after completing this one – and there are many similarities.) Glancing back to the book it does come back to me. A man has made himself a life that is going quite well – a wife, a family, a popular jazz bar. But a past love of his life (when they were very young) comes back in. His desire all comes back, and he is now torn between his current life and the life he thinks he might have had. Written like that, it sounds like a potboiler romance novel. This book is much more than that. As always, Murakami brings about nuances and insights to the characters that make the entire story more than the cardboard cutout my clunky synopsis above may make it seem.But, it didn’t stick. Is that me? Is that Murakami? Is that the story? Is it the situation in which I was reading? I can’t say. I can only say that the memory of this story is hazy. Not bad, just hazy.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Although it is very fastmoving in style, the story is superficial and ordinary. Probably disappointing for adult readers, it may be good beginning of Murakami for the young ones.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I always like the ideas of Murakami - believe me, I totally understand, but identify or sympathizing with the characters is simply out of the questions =.= I always have a strong urge to punch each of the main characters in the face. I mean, I guess I can totally understand if they're real life people, but the way Murakami writes make me 8-} and wonder wtf are they doing w their lives. I just don't get it. Guess it's a matter of taste.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Quick, Spoiler-Free ReviewIf you've never read any Murakami before, this novel is probably not the place to start (for that I'd suggest 'Kafka on the Shore' or 'Norwegian Wood'). For any Murakami fan, however, I think this is one of his best. I would specifically recommend it to any fan of 'Norwegian Wood', or anyone else who's not so into Murakami's more imaginative and surreal books and is looking for a more realistic story.Longer Review, with some minor spoilersLike 'Norwegian Wood', 'South of the Border, West of the Sun' is one of Murakami's rare straightforwardly realistic books. Unlike the majority of his other novels, there is nothing surreal or supernatural in this story (no talking cats or waking dreams this time around, sorry). Nonetheless, it's not at all lacking in the enigmatic are serendipitous, and has plenty to offer to fans of any of Murakami's works.The story itself is fairly ordinary. It is the story of Hajime, a Japanese man about the same age as Murakami, and the powerful influence of three women on his life: Shimamoto, his junior high school crush, who haunts him for the rest of his life; Izumi, his high school girlfriend, whom he hurts deeply by sleeping with her cousin; and Yukiko, his eventual wife, with whom he has two daughters and a conventionally perfect life. Though this novel is a quick read, the reader gets an intimate and detailed portrait of the way these three relationships shape Hajime's psyche, and how they all play off one another. Ultimately, I see the novel as a deep meditation on the psychological and societal forces that shape how we feel and who we are, and it is hard to read this novel without reflecting on one's own past relationships.One of the things I always admire in Murakami's work is how he is able to imbue the world we live in with a pervasive sense of mystery and the unexplainable. Many times this effect is achieved by his presentation of imaginative universes that seem almost parallel to our own, though never quite there. This novel is different in that it is firmly situated within our world, and thus is its sense of mystery all the more palpable. I'm not sure if this novel will appeal to every Murakami fan out there, but it's one of my personal favorites, and one I will gladly return to in the future.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    At first when I began reading this I thought it was going to be a light version of the author's Norwegian Wood. It was told in a first person style that I liked, but I found myself disliking the main character Hajime most of the time. When I would start to sympathise with his lot in life he'd do something that revealed he hadn't changed and I'd be back to unsympathetic. This is someone caught in a web from his first love, who left damage thereafter in life. The characters in this book essentially were unable to move on in minor or major ways from early experiences, to the detriment of all I think. A sad story.It is a decent, if odd, short novel.