The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997)

In this jam-packed novel about alienation between husbands and wives, Japan’s postwar role in the world, the aftereffects of sexual abuse, and more, Murakami channels Joyce, Philip K. Dick, and Don DeLillo, braiding their styles into one all his own. The overarching narrative concerns Toru Okada’s strange quest to recover his missing cat — and missing wife. But the heart of the novel is an expansive detour about the aptly nicknamed Boris the Manskinner, a Russian operative sent into the Manchurian countryside during the brutal Second Sino-Japanese War. Murakami, at his very best, captures the 20th century — surreal, unbelievable, and too horrifying not to be true.