Ready Reference Treatise: Norwegian Wood

By Raja Sharma

“Norwegian Wood” by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami was first published in 1987. The book presents a nostalgic story of loss and increasing sexuality.

Toru Watanabe is the narrator of the story. The story is told from the first person perspective. The narrator goes back to his past and describes the days while he had been living as a college student in Tokyo, Japan.

He describes how he developed his relationships with two very different women in Tokyo. The reader is able to see all the events through Watanabe’s reminiscences. Those two women are Naoko and Midori.

Ready Reference Treatise: Norwegian Wood
Copyright
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Plot Overview
Chapter Three: Major Characters
Chapter Four: Complete Summary
Chapter Five: Critical Analysis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: May 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311232267

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma is a retired college lecturer.He has taught English Literature to University students for more than two decades.His students are scattered all over the world, and it is noticeable that he is in contact with more than ninety thousand of his students.

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Ready Reference Treatise: Norwegian Wood

Copyright

Ready Reference Treatise: Norwegian Wood

Raja Sharma

Copyright@2016 Raja Sharma

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Chapter One: Introduction

Norwegian Wood by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami was first published in 1987. The book presents a nostalgic story of loss and increasing sexuality.

Toru Watanabe is the narrator of the story. The story is told from the first person perspective. The narrator goes back to his past and describes the days while he had been living as a college student in Tokyo, Japan.

He describes how he developed his relationships with two very different women in Tokyo. The reader is able to see all the events through Watanabe’s reminiscences. Those two women are Naoko and Midori.

Naoko is very beautiful but she is emotionally upset, on the other hand Midori is very lively and outgoing.

The story of the novel is set in Tokyo during the late 1960s. It was time of anger and dissent, when the young students in Japan and several other countries were rising and protesting against the established order in their respective society and nations.

That social scenario serves as the backdrop against which the events of the present novel unfold. The author presents the student movement in Japan through the perspectives of Watanabe and Midori.

The narrator describes that student movement as weak willed and hypocritical, obviously not fated to succeed.

The opening or the first section of the novel has been adapted from the author’s earlier short story Firefly. Eventually, the author put that story in the collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

When the novel Norwegian Wood was presented for the first time, it instantly became very popular with its young Japanese readers.

Murakami, the author, became a kind of superstar in his country, although he was not very pleased with the events. The popularity caused him a lot of dismay.

The novel was later, in 2010, adapted into a movie of the same name and it also proved to be a highly successful movie.

Chapter Two: Plot Overview

Toru Watanabe is a 37 years old man from Japan. As the novel opens, he happens to have just arrived in Hamburg, Germany. Once, he hears an orchestral cover of the Beatles’