In the spring of 1978, a young Haruki Murakami sat down at his kitchen table and began to write. The result: two remarkable short novels --- HEAR THE WIND SING and PINBALL, 1973 --- that launched the career of one of the most acclaimed authors of our time.

These powerful, at times surreal, works about two young men coming of age --- the unnamed narrator and his friend the Rat --- are stories of loneliness, obsession and eroticism. They bear all the hallmarks of Murakami’s later books, and form the first two-thirds, with A WILD SHEEP CHASE, of the trilogy of the Rat. 

Widely available in English for the first time ever, newly translated, and featuring a new introduction by Murakami himself, WIND/PINBALL gives us a fascinating insight into a great writer’s beginnings.