The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Toru Okada, an unemployed Tokyo everyman, searches for his missing cat and then his missing wife Kumiko, who has fallen under the influence of her sinister brother Noboru Wataya, a rising political figure. Toru's quest takes him through encounters with psychic sisters, a teenage neighbor obsessed with death, and hallucinatory descents into a dry well — where he accesses a shadow world connecting his personal crisis to Japan's suppressed memories of wartime atrocities in Manchuria. He ultimately confronts a dark entity in a surreal hotel corridor, reclaims agency through violence, and destroys Noboru Wataya's power, though the cost of that destruction remains ambiguous.

Toru Okada has recently quit his job at a law firm and drifts through domestic life in a quiet Tokyo suburb. His cat, Noboru Wataya (named sarcastically after Kumiko's brother, whom Toru despises), has gone missing. A series of strange phone calls from an unknown woman disrupts Toru's routine. His w...