Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Murakami, Haruki - Yoshio Iwamoto (essay date Spring 1993)

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Yoshio Iwamoto (essay date Spring 1993)

SOURCE: “A Voice from Postmodern Japan: Haruki Murakami,” in World Literature Today, Vol. 67, No. 2, Spring, 1993, pp. 295–300.

[In the following essay, Iwamoto identifies the distinctly postmodern qualities of Murakami's fiction, focusing on A Wild Sheep Chase.]

Forget everything you know about Japan and enter the postmodern world of Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase, where people sweat about their careers, drink too much, and drift through broken marriages, all without a kimono in sight.

A postmodern detective novel in which dreams, hallucinations and a wild imagination are more important than actual clues.

As these two quotes—appearing on the back cover and front page of the paperback edition of A Wild Sheep Chase,¹ the English translation of Haruki Murakami's novel Hitsuji o megaru bōken...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Naomi Matsuoka (essay date 1993)
   2. Yoshio Iwamoto (essay date Spring 1993)
   3. David L. Ulin (review date 4 April 1993)
   4. Brooke Horvath (review date Fall 1993)
   5. Jim McCue (review date 19 November 1993)
   6. Constance Markey (review date 2 January 1994)
   7. Elizabeth Ward (review date 16 January 1994)
   8. Alan Wearne (review date February 1994)
   9. Alexander Harrison (review date 18 March 1994)
   10. Celeste Loughman (review date Spring 1994)
   11. Celeste Loughman (essay date Winter 1997)
   12. Elizabeth Ward (review date 9 November 1997)
   13. Lindsley Cameron (review date 1998)
   14. Edward Hower (review date May 1998)
   15. Matthew C. Strecher (essay date May 1998)
   16. Julian Ferraro (review date 1 May 1998)
   17. Michael Wood (review date 11 May 1998)
   18. Tom Hiney (review date 20 June 1998)
   19. Yoshiko Yokochi Samuel (review date Spring 1999)
   20. Phil Baker (review date 23 July 1999)
   21. Lorna Sage (review date 30 September 1999)
   22. Scott Reyburn (review date 15 November 1999)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright