Men Without Women Stories

One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, NPR, and Esquire

[A] beguilingly irresistible book. Like a lost lover, it holds on tight long after the affair is over. The New York Times Book Review

Classic Murakami. . . . [His] voice cool, poised, witty, characterized by a peculiar blend of whimsy and poignancy, wit and profundity hasn t lost its power to unsettle even as it amuses. The Boston Globe
 
Time and again in these seven stories, Murakami displays his singular genius. Los Angeles Times
 
Intimate, captivating and poignant. . . . A short story is brief enough to be perfectible and Men Without Women showcases that. The Kansas City Star

Beautifully rendered. Financial Times

Affecting. . . . Murakami is a master of the open-ended mystery. . . . His meandering, mesmerizing tales of profound alienation are driven by puzzling circumstances that neither his characters nor readers can crack recalling existentialist Gabriel Marcel s assertion that Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be experienced. The Washington Post
 
[Murakami] remains in top form. San Francisco Chronicle
 
Each of the seven stories here [is] a gem in and of its own right, but strung together they re a sparkling strand of precious stones, the light refracted from each equally brilliant but the tones varying subtly. . . . I have something of a love/hate relationship with short stories. Too many mediocre offerings leave me despairing of the genre, but then a collection like Men Without Women comes along and all is forgiven, my faith restored in the recognition of how utterly perfect the medium can be in the right hands. Lucy Scholes, The Independent

Charming and funny. Vulture
 
The best of these stories hold the excitement of a quest: These odd episodes of awakening desire show men startled into an awareness of how they have shorted themselves on life. Minneapolis Star Tribune

Murakami s greatest strength is his creation of environments just eccentric enough to wrong-foot you not exactly magical realism, but perhaps enigmatic realism. . . . When his writing is at its best, his characters act as a fisheye lens through which to scrutinize a slightly off-kilter world that surrounds them. The New Republic
 
Masterful. . . . The mundane gives way suddenly, like an ice floe cracking under our feet, only to reconstitute itself a moment later and swallow up that brief glimpse of what lies below. Vice
 
A whimsical delight. . . . Sanity might be overrated, but Murakami is surely not. The Christian Science Monitor