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...