Killing Commendatore

Haruki Murakami. First U.S. edition (stated), first printing. Dust Jacket: Fine. An unclipped jacket designed by the great Chip Kidd. Hardcover l: Fine. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018. Translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goosen. No writing or markings in this beautifully designed first edition, 681 pp. Black pictorial glossy boards with an illustration of the moon and a sun with a black hole, black and white lettering on the spine.

A wonderful book from one of our greatest living writers. In Killing Commendatore, a thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist's home, and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors. A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art--as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby--Killing Commendatore is a stunning work of imagination.