Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Haruki Murakami is a famed Japanese novelist who has written 15 novels, spanning a career that began in 1979 with Hear the Wind Sing.

His work is noted for its mastery of “both suspense and sociology” and a style that is deceptively simple […] with a mystery hidden behind it”—Murakami’s “narratives are almost always inquisitive, exploratory. His heroes, hapless or directed, set off on missions of discovery. Where they end up is sometimes familiar, sometimes profoundly, fundamentally strange” (Treisman, Deborah. “The Underground Worlds of Haruki Murakami.” The New Yorker, 10 Feb. 2019). Murakami’s stylistic techniques are evident throughout Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki: Often, the novel’s seemingly commonplace prose hints at deeper significance. This novel follows the general pattern Treisman describes, as it involves the protagonist’s mission of self-discovery.

Additionally, Murakami’s work often includes dreams, demonstrating the power our imagination can have on our waking lives. The dream-like nature of his novels creates a strange, almost hallucinatory atmosphere. Murakami has said:

for me, writing itself is like dreaming. When I write, I can dream intentionally. I can start and I can stop and I can continue the next day, as I choose. When you’re asleep and having a good dream, with a big steak or a nice beer or a beautiful girl, and you wake up, it’s all gone. But I can continue the next day! (Treisman).

In this novel, Murakami’s tendency to use writing as a form of dreaming leads to descriptions that feel familiar in many ways and yet totally alien at the same time. Tsukuru, an introverted outcast, has a hard time finding his proper place in life and his journey to self-discovery walks the line between a dreamscape and reality.