The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The cat goes missing first, then the wife, and Toru Okada goes looking for both in a netherworld under a placid Tokyo suburb. The back cover also finds a detective story, a marriage coming apart, and buried secrets from Japan's wartime campaign in Manchuria. Shinchosa published it in 1994 and 1995; Jay Rubin's translation followed from Knopf in 1997. John Gall's cover is built around a Kim Keever photograph.