A Wild Sheep Chase / Dance Dance Dance(2006)

Haruki Murakami

"A Wild Sheep Chase" - His life was like his recurring nightmare: a train to nowhere. But an ordinary life has a way of taking an extraordinary turn. Add a girl whose ears are so exquisite that, when uncovered, they improve sex a thousand-fold, a runaway friend, a right-wing politico, an ovine-obsessed professor and a manic-depressive in a sheep outfit, implicate them in a hunt for a sheep, that may or may not be running the world, and the upshot is another singular masterpiece from Haruki Murakami. "Dance Dance Dance" - High-class call girls billed to Mastercard; a psychic thirteen-year-old drop-out with a passion for Talking Heads; a hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers; a one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem; combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose and out comes "Dance Dance Dance". It is an assault on the senses, part murder mystery, part metaphysical speculation; a fable for our times as catchy as a rock song blasting from the window of a sports car.