TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

Haruki Murakami was shocked and depressed¹ to find his normal six-figure readership exploding into the millions when he published Norwegian Wood in 1987. Fame was one thing, superstardom another, and the craziness of it sent him back to the anonymity² of Europe (he had written the book in Greece and Italy). In 1991 he moved to the United States. Not until 1995 was he prepared to resume living in Japan, but strictly³ on his own terms, without the television appearances and professional pontificating expected of a bestselling Japanese author. Norwegian Wood is still the one Murakami book that "everyone" in Japan has read, but Murakami's young audience has grown up with him as he has begun wrestling with Japan's dark past (in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle) and the 1995 double punch of the Kobe earthquake and, in Underground, the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Accustomed to his cool, fragmented, American-flavoured narratives⁴ on mysterious sheep and disappearing elephants, some of Murakami's early readers were dismayed to find that Norwegian Wood seemed to be "just" a love story - and one that bore a suspicious resemblance to the kind of Japanese main stream autobiographical fiction that Murakami had rejected since his exciting debut⁵ in 1979. As Murakami himself tells it, "Many of my readers thought that Norwegian Wood was a retreat for me, a betrayal of what my works had stood for until then. For me personally, however, it was just the opposite: it was an adventure, a challenge. I had never written that kind of straight, simple story, and I wanted to test myself. I set Norwegian Wood in the late 1960s. I borrowed the details of the protagonist's university environment and daily life from those of my own student days. As a result, many people think it is an autobiographical novel, but in fact it is not autobiographical at all. My own youth was far less dramatic, far more boring than his. If I had simply written the literal truth of my own life, the novel would have been no more than 15 pages long." The author may joke away its autobiographicality, but the book feels like an autobiography⁶; it favours lived experience over mind games and shots at the supernatural, and it does indeed tell us much more straightforwardly⁷ than any of his other novels what life was like for the young Haruki Murakami when he first came to Tokyo from Kobe. Back then, in the years 1968-70 that occupy the bulk of the novel, Murakami's experience centred on meeting the love of his life, his wife, Yoko, amid the turbulence⁸ of the student movement. The author is right, though: there is a lot of fiction here, and a lot of caricature and humour, and a lot of symbolism that Murakami's regular readers will recognise instantly. It is by no means "just" a love story. Determined⁹ Murakami readers abroad may have succeeded in obtaining copies of Alfred Birnbaum's earlier translation of Norwegian Wood, which was produced for distribution in Japan, with grammar notes at the back, to enable students to enjoy their favourite author as they struggled with the mysteries of English. Although the novel has appeared in French, Italian, Chinese, Korean, Norwegian and Hebrew, the present edition is the first English translation that Murakami has authorized¹⁰ for publication outside Japan.

JAY RUBIN

The End

1 depressed   

adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的

参考例句：

• When he was depressed,he felt utterly divorced from reality.他心情沮丧时就感到完全脱离了现实。
• His mother was depressed by the sad news.这个坏消息使他的母亲意志消沉。

2 anonymity   

n.the condition of being anonymous

参考例句：

• Names of people in the book were changed to preserve anonymity. 为了姓名保密，书中的人用的都是化名。
• Our company promises to preserve the anonymity of all its clients. 我们公司承诺不公开客户的姓名。

3 strictly   

adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地

参考例句：

• His doctor is dieting him strictly.他的医生严格规定他的饮食。
• The guests were seated strictly in order of precedence.客人严格按照地位高低就座。

4 narratives   

记叙文( narrative的名词复数 )； 故事； 叙述； 叙述部分

参考例句：

• Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning. 结婚一向是许多小说的终点，然而也是一个伟大的开始。
• This is one of the narratives that children are fond of. 这是孩子们喜欢的故事之一。

5 debut   

n.首次演出，初次露面

参考例句：

• That same year he made his Broadway debut, playing a suave radio journalist.在那同一年里，他初次在百老汇登台，扮演一个温文而雅的电台记者。
• The actress made her debut in the new comedy.这位演员在那出新喜剧中首次登台演出。

6 autobiography   

n.自传

参考例句：

• He published his autobiography last autumn.他去年秋天出版了自己的自传。
• His life story is recounted in two fascinating volumes of autobiography.这两卷引人入胜的自传小说详述了他的生平。

7 straightforwardly   

adv.正直地

参考例句：

• He hated her straightforwardly, making no effort to conceal it. 他十分坦率地恨她，从不设法加以掩饰。 来自辞典例句
• Mardi, which followed hard on its heels, was another matter. Mardi begins straightforwardly. 紧跟着出版的《玛地》，却是另一回事。《玛地》开始时平铺直叙。 来自辞典例句

8 turbulence   

n.喧嚣，狂暴，骚乱，湍流

参考例句：

• The turbulence caused the plane to turn over.空气的激流导致飞机翻转。
• The world advances amidst turbulence.世界在动荡中前进。

9 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

10 authorized   

a.委任的，许可的

参考例句：

• An administrative order is valid if authorized by a statute.如果一个行政命令得到一个法规的认可那么这个命令就是有效的。