There is a publisher's 'Damaged' stamp to the bottom edge of the page block. With some lighter creasing to the edges also. There is also a crease to the lower corner of the front cover, and another to the top corner of the back cover.
The covers are unmarked - however, there are reading creases to the spine which is also rolled from reading. ***Very good in matt black card covers with white titles to the spine and the front cover. ***Translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum. The book was published in hardback in the USA by Kodansha International, also in 1994. Published in the UK as a paperback original. "1" on the publisher's copyright prelims-page: 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2. First impression of the first UK edition with number-string sequence including the no. If Mishima had ever learned the value of gentleness, this is the sort of page-turner he might have written. All the hallmarks of Murakami's greatness are here: restless and sensitive characters, disturbing shifts into altered reality, silky smooth turns of phrase and a narrative with all the momentum of a roller coaster.
In his searchings, he encounters a clairvoyant 13-year-old, her misguided parents and a one-armed poet.
Divorced, bereaved and abandoned by his various lovers, he is drawn to the Dolphin Hotel-a strange and lonely establishment where Kiki, a woman he once lived with, ``upped and vanished.'' Kiki and the Sheep Man, an odd fellow who wears a sheepskin and speaks in a toneless rush, visit the narrator in visions that lead him to two mysteries, one metaphysical (how to survive the unsurvivable) and the other physical (a call girl's murder). The unnamed narrator, a muddled freelance writer, is 34 and no closer to finding happiness than he was in the previous book. In this impressive sequel to A Wild Sheep Chase, Murakami displays his talent to brilliant effect.
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