Hear the wind sing

"Hear the Wind Sing" (1979), Murakami's debut novel, follows a twenty-one-year-old student, unnamed, who is home for the summer in August 1970. He spends his time with his best friend, nicknamed "the Rat," a girl with four fingers on her left hand, and a bartender. Joining these characters is a figure who does not exist: the writer Derek Heartfield, with whom the work both opens and closes.

"Pinball, 1973" (1980) takes place three years later. That same young man now lives in Tokyo, sharing his life with a pair of identical twin girls, while the Rat continues to watch life go by at J.'s Bar.