From Japan With Love

Sputnik Sweetheart, by Haruki Murakami. (Knopf)

Murakami is one of Japan’s more famous writers, and has been called that country’s most likely candidate for a Nobel prize in literature. He has a good number of novels (including The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Dance Dance Dance and Norwegian Wood) and short story collections in English translation. Sputnik Sweetheart, translated by Philip Gabriel, is the latest effort in a long line of fun and outlandish tales featuring desperate quests and characters that could easily be you.

Murakami’s work skillfully avoides the standard literary categories and tired non-plots that plague so many other contemporary writers. Sputnik Sweetheart tells the story of a student in love with a woman in love with another woman, all against the backdrop of the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite. Don’t worry, it’s more bizarre and wonderful than it sounds, and the adventure leads us from Japan to Europe to the coast of Greece and then to the satellite itself. You need to be somewhat cool (and puzzling) in order to have the international following that Murakami does.

Devil in a What?