Pinball 1973

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Pinball 1973 ( Japanese 1973 年 の ピ ン ボ ー ル 1973-nen no Pinbōru [= Pinball] ) is a novel by Haruki Murakami . It was first published in Japanese in 1980 and has not been approved for translation by the author for several decades. The German translation was published by DuMont Buchverlag in 2015 .

content

Pinball 1973 is the sequel to When the Wind Sings . In 1969, the narrator was interested in stories from strange places. His girlfriend Naoko tells him about a sleepy small town that only seems to consist of a train station and a main street. Four years later, the narrator visits this place and reconstructs Naoko's childhood that happened in this place.

His friend Ratte lived several hundred kilometers away in 1973, had a large apartment and his own car, while the narrator could only afford a modest apartment. The narrator remembers the year 1970, in which Ratte was enthusiastic about pinball machines and even cracked the maximum number of points on one device. He researched the device and found out that it was the Starship model from the American company Gilbert. With the help of a Spanish professor, he searches for the device and finds out that it was scrapped in 1971.

criticism

“The plot of both novels [Note: When the wind is playing and Pinball 1973 ] is quickly told: It's about self-discovery, about flirting. Because, as is well known, only love tastes better than beer. Murakami reduces his story to the essentials as well as his language. "

- Sebastian Hammelehle in: Spiegel.de

literature

  • Haruki Murakami: When the Wind Sings Pinball 1973. Two novels. Translated from the Japanese by Ursula Gräfe. btb, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-442-74900-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Maren Keller and Sebastian Hammelehle: Haruki Murakami on the SPIEGEL bestseller list - only love tastes better than beer. In: spiegel.de. June 1, 2015, accessed August 30, 2019 .