{"product_id":"blind-willow-sleeping-woman-isbn-9781400096084","title":"Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom the surreal to the mundane, twenty-four stories that “show Murukami at his dynamic, organic best” (\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e). \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A warning to new readers of Haruki Murakami: You will become addicted.... His newest collection is as enigmatic and sublime as ever.\" —\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit Murakami’s ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and entertaining.\u003cp\u003e\"A warning to new readers of Haruki Murakami: You will become addicted. . . . His  newest collection is as enigmatic and sublime as ever.\" —\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Whimsical, magical, daring or sometimes played with the mute in the bell of the  trumpet. . . . The best of these linger far beyond the reading of them.” —\u003ci\u003eChicago  Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Murakami’s writing perfectly captures the way surreal, even seemingly supernatural,  encounters can subtly alter the terrain of everyday life.” —\u003ci\u003eWashington Post Book  World\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“This collection shows Murakami at his dynamic, organic best. . . . In \u003ci\u003eBlind  Willow, Sleeping Woman\u003c\/i\u003e, Murakami demonstrates brilliantly the perils of trying to  squeeze life into prefabricated compartments.” —\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHARUKI MURAKAMI was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and one of the most recent of his many international honors is the Cino Del Duca World Prize, whose previous recipients include Jorge Luis Borges, Ismail Kadare, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Joyce Carol Oates.\u003cb\u003eBlind Willow, Sleeping Woman\u003c\/b\u003eWhen I closed my eyes, the scent of the wind wafted up toward me. A May  wind, swelling up like a piece of fruit, with a rough outer skin, slimy  flesh, dozens of seeds. The flesh split open in midair, spraying seeds  like gentle buckshot into the bare skin of my arms, leaving behind a faint  trace of pain.“What time is it?” my cousin asked me. About eight inches shorter than me,  he had to look up when he talked.I glanced at my watch. “Ten twenty.”“Does that watch tell good time?”“Yeah, I think so.”My cousin grabbed my wrist to look at the watch. His slim, smooth fingers  were surprisingly strong. “Did it cost a lot?”“No, it’s pretty cheap,” I said, glancing again at the timetable.No response.My cousin looked confused. The white teeth between his parted lips looked  like bones that had atrophied.\u003ci\u003e“It’s pretty cheap,”\u003c\/i\u003e I said, looking right at him, carefully repeating the  words. \u003ci\u003e“It’s pretty cheap, but it keeps good time.”\u003c\/i\u003eMy cousin nodded silently.    My cousin can’t hear well out of his right ear. Soon after he went into  elementary school he was hit by a baseball and it screwed up his hearing.  That doesn’t keep him from functioning normally most of the time. He  attends a regular school, leads an entirely normal life. In his classroom,  he always sits in the front row, on the right, so he can keep his left ear  toward the teacher. And his grades aren’t so bad. The thing is, though, he  goes through periods when he can hear sounds pretty well, and periods when  he can’t. It’s cyclical, like the tides. And sometimes, maybe twice   a year, he can barely hear anything out of either ear. It’s like the  silence   in his right ear deepens to the point where it crushes out any sound   on the left side. When that happens, ordinary life goes out the window and  he has to take some time off from school. The doctors are basi-  cally stumped. They’ve never seen a case like it, so there’s nothing they  can do.“Just because a watch is expensive doesn’t mean it’s accurate,” my cousin  said, as if trying to convince himself. “I used to have a pretty expensive  watch, but it was always off. I got it when I started junior high, but I  lost it a year later. Since then I’ve gone without a watch. They won’t buy  me a new one.”“Must be tough to get along without one,” I said.“What?” he asked.\u003ci\u003e“Isn’t it hard to get along without a watch?”\u003c\/i\u003e I repeated, looking right at  him.“No, it isn’t,” he replied, shaking his head. “It’s not like I’m living  off   in the mountains or something. If I want to know the time I just ask  somebody.”“True enough,” I said.We were silent again for a while.I knew I should say something more, try to be kind to him, try to make him  relax a little until we arrived at the hospital. But it had been five  years since I saw him last. In the meanwhile he’d grown from nine to  fourteen, and I’d gone from twenty to twenty-five. And that span of time  had created a translucent barrier between us that was hard to traverse.  Even when I had to say something, the right words just wouldn’t come out.  And every time I hesitated, every time I swallowed back something I was  about to say, my cousin looked at me with a slightly confused look on his  face. His left ear tilted ever so slightly toward me.“What time is it now?” he asked me.“Ten twenty-nine,” I replied.It was ten thirty-two when the bus finally rolled into view.    Visit Haruki Murakami's official website to read more from \u003ci\u003eBlind Willow, Sleeping Woman.\u003c\/i\u003ewww.harukimurakami.comStories","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305378402533,"sku":"NP9781400096084","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400096084.jpg?v=1767722767","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/blind-willow-sleeping-woman-isbn-9781400096084","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}