Sputnik Sweetheart

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Sputnik Sweetheart ( Japanese ス プ ー ト ニ ク の 恋人 supūtoniku no koibito ) is a novel by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami , which was published in 1999 by Kōdansha . The German translation by Ursula Gräfe was published in 2002.

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The novel describes the friendship between the first-person narrator, known only as K , and Sumire , a somewhat disorganized young woman who wants to become a writer but has not yet finished a novel. While K is in love with Sumire, she shows no interest in him or in any relationship or sexuality at all. At the age of 22, Sumire falls in love with Miu , a businesswoman of Korean descent, who is 17 years her senior . The two women go on a business trip to Europe. When they finally add a vacation time on a Greek island, Sumire disappears without a trace, and Miu asks K for help, who travels to them and helps them find the place. As the search progresses, fantastic elements appear in the plot. What has been described is becoming increasingly unclear. Miu seems to have had a doppelganger in the course of her life , while Sumire's disappearance without a trace tries to explain K by switching to another reality. The end finally leaves open whether Sumire has disappeared, has returned or K follows her into another plane of reality.

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K

K is the first-person narrator . You don't get his full name. He is a teacher in his mid-twenties who leads a manageable and leisurely life. He teaches at a primary school, occasionally has non-binding affairs of little importance, otherwise you hardly learn anything about the rest of his life. The main determining factor for the novel is his relationship with Sumire, with whom he is in love without this love being returned. While searching for the missing Sumire, he develops the theory that she has passed into another reality. It seems that one night he finds the transition to this himself, but uses meditation to save himself from the transition.

Sumire

Sumire wants to be a writer. Since she was a child, it has helped her to write things down in order to understand them. Her work, however, is as unstructured as the rest of her life, which is why she never managed to finish any novel. She is characterized by a certain carelessness, for example often wearing different socks or leaving the house in a bathrobe. K is her most important caregiver, his steadfastness grounds her, and in difficult situations she often calls him in the middle of the night. When she first falls in love in her life, many circumstances change. She dresses tastefully, quits smoking and, in contrast to before, adopts a structured daily routine. At the same time she suffers writer's block. Her love for Miu remains as unrequited as K's love for her. When she learns of an enigmatic incident in Miu's life, she disappears without a trace.

Miu

Miu is a businesswoman who appears to be the complete opposite of Sumire. She leads a tightly organized life, is always correct in appearance and behavior, and behaves extremely purposefully. When the Bohemian Sumire tells her of her enthusiasm for Jack Kerouac , Miu asks her if she sees herself as a beatnik , but confuses the term with Sputnik . Hence the title of the novel comes from. Miu was born in Korea , but lives in Japan and operates internationally with her company. At the age of 25 she had a puzzling incident in her life. She is accidentally trapped in a ferris wheel at an amusement park overnight. With binoculars that she has with her, she watches the window of her own apartment. There she sees herself with a man who has been chasing her for some time, but in whom she has no interest. The two sleep together. Miu passes out and wakes up in the hospital the next morning. Her hair has turned snow white and since that night she has had the feeling that part of her has been lost. While she was planning to become a concert pianist for herself, she suddenly lost the ability to play the piano, for example.

K's mistress

K has a relationship with the mother of one of his students, whose name is never mentioned. At first, this affair has no relevance to the plot. After Sumire disappears, there is a scene in which the woman and her son Shin'ichi Nimura , known as turnip, appear in the plot. The meaning of this incident for the main plot remains unclear, but the turnip , which often appears enraptured, has character traits that also apply to Sumire and Miu, after they allegedly had contact with alternative reality. After this scene, K ends the relationship.

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The novel covers a number of different subjects. Primarily it is about relationships of an erotic and friendly nature. The three main characters describe different variants of interpersonal relationships. But it is also about the position of the individual in society. While K leads an adapted life, Sumire is emphatically non-conformist and Miu takes on the role of a designer. The topic of loneliness comes up again and again. All protagonists are strong loners in different ways, whose loneliness is never completely broken in the context of the relationships described, since none of them has the relationship to the others that he or she wants. The Sputnik becomes a metaphor for the lonely protagonists of the triangle story, who watch the world but never really meet. The meaning of the presumed parallel reality is not explained and is left for the reader to interpret. It makes sense to see metaphors here for growing up and personal maturation processes, central themes in many of Murakami's works.

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