Killing Commendatore: A novel

by Haruki Murakami Narrated by Kirby Heyborne

Overview

The epic new novel from the internationally acclaimed and best-selling author of 1Q84

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 from one of our greatest writers.

Editorial Reviews

OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile

A struggling portrait artist who is trying to change his career direction is the focus of this new audiobook from acclaimed Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. Narrator Kirby Heyborne employees a measured tone and pace as the story weaves a fantastic tale featuring an imaginary character and a nod to the theme of capitalism explored in THE GREAT GATSBY. Heyborne handles the more fantastic incidents with the authority and assuredness needed for the listener to accept the imaginary twists and turns. Expect the unexpected from the author of IQ84 and KAFKA ON THE SHORE in this extraordinary work of scope and imagination. R.O. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

08/13/2018
Murakami’s latest (following Men Without Women) is a meticulous yet gripping novel whose escalating surreal tone complements the author’s tight focus on the domestic and the mundane. The unnamed narrator, a talented but unambitious portrait-painter in Tokyo, discovers his wife is having an affair, quits painting, and embarks on a meandering road trip. The narrator’s friend offers to let him stay in the home of his father, Tomohiko Amada, a famous, now-senile painter whose difficult secret from 1930s Vienna unfurls over the course of the book. Once situated on the quiet, mysterious mountainside outside Odawara, the narrator begins teaching painting classes and finds a hidden, violent painting of Amada’s in the attic called Killing Commendatore, an allegorical adaptation of Don Giovanni. He begins two affairs—one with an older woman who sparks the novel whenever she appears—and is commissioned by the enigmatic Mr. Menshiki to paint his portrait. Menshiki is preoccupied with a 13-year-old girl named Mariye—an intriguing character, but one whom the book has an unfortunate tendency to sexualize. At night, the narrator is haunted by a ringing bell coming from a covered pit near his house. This eventually leads him to a magical realm that includes impish physical manifestations of ideas and metaphors. His discovery provokes a pivotal, satisfying moment in his artistic development on the way to a protracted, mystic denouement. The story never rushes, relishing digressions into Bruce Springsteen, the simple pleasures of freshly cooked fish, and the way artists sketch. As the narrator uncovers his talents, the reading experience becomes more propulsive. Murakami’s sense of humor helps balance the otherworldly and the prosaic, making this a consistently rewarding novel. 250,000-copy announced first printing. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

A Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Financial Times, Library Journal, LitHub, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year

“Exhilarating ... magical.” —The Washington Post

“Some novelists hold a mirror up to the world and some, like Haruki Murakami, use the mirror as a portal to a universe hidden beyond it.” —The Wall Street Journal

“[Murakami] is as masterful as ever.” —Houston Chronicle

“A spellbinding parable of art, history, and human loneliness.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“The product of a singular imagination.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Expansive and intricate.” —The New York Times

“Beguiling. . . . Murakami is brilliant.” —The Guardian

“Dazzling. . . . [Murakami] reveals how an artist sees the world.” —Entertainment Weekly

“[A] sprawling, uncanny epic. . . . A time-traveling tale of loss, longing, and the creation of art—with an ample dash of Murakami’s trademark deadpan humor.” —Vanity Fair

“A perfect balance of tradition and individual talent. . . . Murakami dancing along ‘the inky blackness of the Path of Metaphor’ is like Fred Astaire dancing across a floor, then up the walls and onto the ceiling.” —The Spectator

“A surreal, world-altering epic punctuated by art, literature and history.” —Time

“[Murakami] once more explicates the seemingly impossible with such thorough, exacting conviction to make believers of us all.” —The Christian Science Monitor
 
“No other author mixes domestic, fantastic and esoteric elements into such weirdly bewitching shades. . . . Just as [Murakami] straddles barriers dividing high art from mass entertainment, so he suspends borders between east and west.” —Financial Times
 
“[Killing Commendatore] marks the return of a master.” —Esquire
 
“The complex landscape that Murakami assembles in Killing Commendatore is a word portrait of the artist’s inner life.” —The Times Literary Supplement
 
“Fascinating. . . . Drawing on Buddhist spiritualism, metaphysics and magical realism—not to mention Lewis Carroll—Killing Commendatore finds its narrator enmeshed in a singular philosophic adventure.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
 
“Enthralling.” —Forward
 
“Murakami beautifully captures the evanescence of inspiration.” —Vulture
 
“Its size, beauty, and concerns with lust and war bring us back to the vividness and scale of [Murakami’s] 1997 epic, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.’’ —The Boston Globe
 
“Lovely and strange.” —Bustle
 
“Wild, thrilling. . . . Murakami is a master storyteller and he knows how to keep us hooked. . . . What makes his voice so distinctive, and so captivating, is the mix of precise observation, clarity and deadpan humour.” —The Sunday Times (London)

OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile

A struggling portrait artist who is trying to change his career direction is the focus of this new audiobook from acclaimed Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. Narrator Kirby Heyborne employees a measured tone and pace as the story weaves a fantastic tale featuring an imaginary character and a nod to the theme of capitalism explored in THE GREAT GATSBY. Heyborne handles the more fantastic incidents with the authority and assuredness needed for the listener to accept the imaginary twists and turns. Expect the unexpected from the author of IQ84 and KAFKA ON THE SHORE in this extraordinary work of scope and imagination. R.O. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169499353
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	10/09/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Prologue

Today when I awoke from a nap the faceless man was there before me. He was seated on the chair across from the sofa I’d been sleeping on, staring straight at me with a pair of imaginary eyes in a face that wasn’t.

The man was tall, and he was dressed the same as when I had seen him last. His face-that-wasn’t-a-face was half hidden by a wide-brimmed black hat, and he had on a long, equally dark coat.



“I came here so you could draw my portrait,” the faceless man said, after he’d made sure I was fully awake. His voice was low, toneless, flat. “You promised you would. You remember?”

“Yes, I remember. But I couldn’t draw it then because I didn’t have any paper,” I said. My voice, too, was toneless and flat. “So to make up for it I gave you a little penguin charm.”

“Yes, I brought it with me,” he said, and held out his right hand. In his hand—which was extremely long—he held a small plastic penguin, the kind you often see attached to a cell phone strap as a good-luck charm. He dropped it on top of the glass coffee table, where it landed with a small clunk.

“I’m returning this. You probably need it. This little penguin will be the charm that should protect those you love. In exchange, I want you to draw my portrait.”

I was perplexed. “I get it, but I’ve never drawn a portrait of a person without a face.”

My throat was parched.

“From what I hear, you’re an outstanding portrait artist. And there’s a first time for everything,” the faceless man said. And then he laughed. At least, I think he did. That laugh-like voice was like the empty sound of wind blowing up from deep inside a cavern.

He took off the hat that hid half of his face. Where the face should have been, there was nothing, just the slow whirl of a fog.

I stood up and retrieved a sketchbook and a soft pencil from my studio. I sat back down on the sofa, ready to draw a portrait of the man with no face. But I had no idea where to begin, or how to get started. There was only a void, and how are you supposed to give form to something that does not exist? And the milky fog that surrounded the void was continually changing shape.

“You’d better hurry,” the faceless man said. “I can’t stay here forlong.”

My heart was beating dully inside my chest. I didn’t have much time. I had to hurry. But my fingers holding the pencil just hung there in midair, immobilized. It was as though everything from my wrist down into my hand were numb. There were several people I had to protect, and all I was able to do was draw pictures. Even so, there was no way I could draw him. I stared at the whirling fog. “I’m sorry, but your time’s up,” the man without a face said a little while later. From his faceless mouth, he let out a deep breath, like pale fog hovering over a river.

“Please wait. If you give me just a little more time—”

The man put his black hat back on, once again hiding half of his face.“One day I’ll visit you again. Maybe by then you’ll be able to draw me. Until then, I’ll keep this penguin charm.”



Then he vanished. Like a mist suddenly blown away by a freshening breeze, he vanished into thin air. All that remained was the unoccupied chair and the glass table. The penguin charm was gone from the tabletop.

It all seemed like a short dream. But I knew very well that it wasn’t. If this was a dream, then the world I’m living in itself must all be a dream.



Maybe someday I’ll be able to draw a portrait of nothingness. Just like another artist was able to complete a painting titled Killing Commendatore. But to do so I would need time to get to that point. I would have to have time on my side.

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