He offers instead a down-to-earth examination of isolation and intimacy so elementary that it feels more like minimalist art than the complex, wind-up creations he usually produces. But here the author strips away the magical quavers of reality and the mind-bending plot structures that have become hallmarks of his work. Like most of his work, from the cyberpunk-fantasy-detective hybrid "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" to the unwieldy and otherworldly three-volume marathon "1Q84," this new novel chronicles a spiritual quest that might also be a love story. Murakami has won international audiences and prizes by writing a kind of shamanistic science fiction of everyday life. The pilgrimage makes a fine metaphor for its hero's journey, but perhaps an even better one for the author's. The "pilgrimage" of Haruki Murakami's latest novel, "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage," translates literally as a "reverent perambulation." In this traditional Japanese practice, one dons white robes symbolic of ascetic simplicity, leaves excess baggage behind and gives oneself over to the rhythms and vicissitudes of travel.
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