Killing Commendatore Harvill Secker

The ambitious major new novel from this internationally celebrated writer, on the scale of his bestselling 1Q84 The painter's wife has left him for a younger man. Taking some time away from Tokyo, he starts looking after the empty house of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. Not long after he moves in, a scraping sound in the attic leads him to find a carefully wrapped canvas, labelled "Killing Commendatore". This unusual painting leads him to delve into Amada's life story and those of his neighbours. It also brings him into contact with a strange parallel universe, from which the Commendatore himself emerges. When his neighbour's daughter vanishes, the painter must embark on a quest that leads him back to a tragedy in his own past. A profound engagement with art and its creation, Killing Commendatore asks whether confronting the past can ever bring comfort, or just more pain? Ambitious, haunting, and multi-layered, it is reminiscent of Murakami's masterpiece The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and takes his narrative art in new and exciting directions.