5 Murakami Books You Should Read Now (Besides Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki And His Years Of Pilgrimage)

Last week Haruki Murakami's latest book, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, was released to the extreme excitement of uberfans everywhere. If you are new to the phenomenon that is Murakami, or you're just so excited about the new one that you want more too, here are five suggestions to get you started on what will certainly be a new obsession.

1. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

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"Murakami's bold willingness to go straight over the top [is] a signal indication of his genius...a world-class writer who has both eyes open and takes big risks." via Washington Post Book World

2. A Wild Sheep Chase

Via wordpress.com

"That such unruly, disjunctive elements mingle harmoniously within it is perhaps the signal feat in a highly accomplished piece of craftsmanship. If A Wild Sheep Chase is not in itself an unqualified success...it may be something more heartening still for the Japanese novel, a presentiment of fresh outlooks and impulses." via The New Yorker

3. Norwegian Wood

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"A masterly novel....Norwegian Wood bears the unmistakable marks of Murakami's hand." via The New York Times Book Review

4. Kafka on the Shore

Via blogger.com

"Perhaps it needn't be said that this meta-fictional fun house isn't perfect, but underpinning it all is a surprisingly patient, deeply affecting meditation on perfection itself, specifically romantic perfection — the obsessive greed in pursuing it, the selfish isolation that comes from achieving it, the soul-killing (and also selfish) grief of outliving it, of being left, inevitably, with nothing but its fading memory." via Jon Zobenica, Atlantic Monthly

5. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Via wordpress.com

"Murakami's most ambitious work to date....Ingeniously, Murakami links history to a detective story that uses a mannered realism and metaphysical speculation to catapult the narrator into the surreal place where mysteries are solved and evil is confronted." via Publishers Weekly