[This is a guest post by Akiyoshi Suzuki (Nagasaki University), with a summary of his Hestia@Birmingham presentation on the subject: ‘A Good Map is Worth a Thousand Words: 3-D Topographic Narrative of Haruki Murakami’]
The mapping of novels has been popular in Japan, either for simply providing a guide to fans wishing to follow the footsteps of the characters or else for bringing to the surface the unconscious, the blind spots or else the novel’s biopolitics. For readers of Murakami’s fiction, however, mapping is uncertain; the characters’ trails are strange and mysterious. And a constant refrain is heard, as when Naoko in Norwegian Wood asks, “Where are we?”.
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