A Wild Sheep Chase cover art

A Wild Sheep Chase

 Preview

Get 30 days of Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30-day free trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options
Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

A marvelous hybrid of mythology and mystery, A Wild Sheep Chase is the extraordinary literary thriller that launched Haruki Murakami's international reputation.

It begins simply enough: a 20-something advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend and casually appropriates the image for an insurance company's advertisement. What he doesn't realise is that included in the pastoral scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man in black who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences. Thus begins a surreal and elaborate quest that takes our hero from the urban haunts of Tokyo to the remote and snowy mountains of northern Japan, where he confronts not only the mythological sheep, but the confines of tradition and the demons deep within himself. Quirky and utterly captivating, A Wild Sheep Chase is Murakami at his astounding best.

©1982 Haruki Murakami (P)2020 Penguin Audio Action & Adventure Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Magical Realism Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Thriller & Suspense World Literature Magic Fantasy

Critic reviews

"A Wild Sheep Chase has the conventional hull of a thriller - a quest, a mystery, an extraordinary woman, and plenty of elegant duress - but its fantastic superstructure transforms it into something quite different...a science fiction fantasy, a romance, a metaphysical tease, or a dramatisation of philosophical ideas." (Independent)
All stars
Most relevant
Beautifully written and strange combination of Raymond Chandler and Neil Gaiman. Nicely read in a style that suits.

My favourite Murakami novel

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
If you’re just getting to know Murukami’s work, avoid this narrator. It’s a brilliant book, but this particular narrator makes you not want to listen, this will probably put you off listening and as a result you are likely to miss out on a giant in magical realism. Dexter Galang has the dullest voice; it’s annoying, monotone, and sounds like a pretentious pubescent nerd. Whoever bought his recordings or encouraged him to read must have been tripping balls.

Worst narrator I’ve come across

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Mildly entertaining. Narration is great, but the story itself is a little bland and nonsensical.

Not as good as his other works

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Trying to get into this since I loved his other work but the narration is making it difficut to enjoy.
Would like to hear this but with another narrator.

interesting but bad narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I didn’t find this book as good as some of Murakami’s other books but I had read Dance Dance Dance and this was its prequel so I listened to it. DDD was much better in my opinion but I’m still glad to have listened to this for continuity’s sake and it was not boring. The narration though I didn’t like. It was very monotonous. Could have been done much better.

Not Murakami’s best

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews