Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle: A Novel (1994-1995) traces the story of Toru Okada, an ordinary Japanese man who experiences a strange, unsettling journey when his cat and his wife disappear and he goes searching for them.

In Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (1997-1998), Murakami gives a riveting factual account of the tragic events that took place in Tokyo on March 20, 1995, when followers of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo unleashed deadly sarin gas into the Tokyo subway system, killing and injuring many commuters on their way to work.

Murakami's two-volume novel Norwegian Wood (1987) tells a realistic love story of a man who falls in love with two women. This book catapulted Murakami to fame, as it sold over four million copies in Japan.

Murakami's novel Kafka on the Shore (2005) follows the strange paths of two characters...