The girlfriend is told to leave and then the Rat explains to the protagonist that the sheep possessed him as well, but he then killed himself with the sheep still inside him because he did not want to do its bidding. They eventually find a house that the Rat is renting and the protagonist stays in this house until he meets a man dressed in sheep costume, who turns out to be the ghost of the Rat in disguise. They find that sheep are very important on the Northern Island of Hokkaido, and meet a sheep professor in their hotel who claims to have been possessed by the magic sheep, just as the boss was. Our unnamed protagonist must then take a trip to Northern Japan with his prostitute girlfriend in order to find his old business partner, the Rat, who took the photo of the sheep. He goes on to explain that the comatose boss of his organisation swears that a magic sheep possessed him and inspired him to become the crime lord he is now. By unwittingly using a picture of a very special sheep in an advert the protagonist is hunted down by a representative of a crime organisation who claims that the sheep is magic. The story of the novel revolves around an unnamed protagonist who is running an unsuccessful advertisement agency. Some of his previous works have been translated as a tool for Japanese people learning English, but never officially released to an English readership.

‘A wild Sheep chase’ is Murakami’s first novel to be translated into English for an English audience. His most famous work is ‘Norwegian wood’, highly regarded as his best novel and the only one of his books to be adapted to film. It is a very popular genre in Japan, largely thanks to Murakami who is the bestselling author in his country. ‘A wild Sheep Chase’ is part of a genre of fiction called magical realism, this is when a novel appears to be grounded in reality but then unreal things start happening. It was well received by the group, until the end that is, when the book got a bit too weird for some. Our latest book club meet up was about ‘A wild sheep chase’, a Japanese novel by Haruki Murakami.

Murakami a wild sheep chase