Haruki Murakami · 1982 · overland

Haruki Murakami's 1982 novel, the book that made his name, a deadpan noir that slides into the supernatural. An unnamed Tokyo advertising man is sent on an absurd quest to track down a sheep with a star-shaped birthmark, a hunt that carries him north to the wilds of Hokkaido and a reckoning in a lonely mountain house. Cool, melancholy and strange, it is a detective story in which the mystery is reality itself.

1. 1
   Tokyo

   A disenchanted Tokyo ad man is given an impossible task: find a single sheep with a star on its back from one cryptic photograph, or be ruined.

2. 2
   Aomori

   The search drags him north by train the length of Honshu to Aomori, on the cold edge of the main island.

3. 3
   Hakodate

   He crosses the Tsugaru Strait by ferry to Hokkaido, following the thinning thread of a clue toward the far north.

4. 4
   Sapporo

   In Sapporo he picks up the trail in earnest, helped by the Sheep Man and his own strange companion, closing on the mountains beyond.

5. 5
   Junitaki

   The road ends at a remote, half-abandoned farm at Junitaki, deep in the northern hills, where the mystery of the sheep finally waits.