THE LONG GOODBYE [RONGU GUDDOBAI] - SIGNED

Tokyo: Hayakawa Books, 2010. First Edition. A key translation by Haruki Murakami of Chandler's sixth novel - the apex of 20th century detective fiction, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1955, and basis for Robert Altman's 1973 film starring Elliott Gould and Sterling Hayden. While Murakami is world-renowned for his fiction and essays, he has enjoyed a parallel career doing translation work, including translations of Raymond Carver, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.D. Salinger, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Truman Capote. His biographer and primary translator Jay Rubin notes Murakami developed a fondness for hard-boiled literature while attending high school in Kobe, devouring works by Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and Ed McBain, and Murakami himself acknowledged his debt to Chandler's influence on his novel A Wild Sheep Chase: "The structure of A Wild Sheep Chase was deeply influenced by the detective novels of Raymond Chandler. I am an avid reader of his books and have read some of them many times. I wanted to use his plot structure in my new novel. This mean, first of all, that the protagonist would be a lonely city dweller. He would be searching for something. In the course of his search, he would become entangled in various kinds of complicated situations. And when he finally found what he was looking for, it would already have been ruined or lost. This is obviously Chandler's method and it is what I wanted to use in A Wild Sheep Chase. One West Coast reader saw the connection. Referring to Chandler's The Big Sleep, he called my novel The Big Sheep. I felt honoured by this" (Rubin, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, p.81). Uncommon, one of a few signed copies offered through Japanese bookstores to promote the new translation. Hubin, p.76. First Impression. Octavo (15.75cm); pale grayish-green wrappers, with titles printed in dark purple; dustjacket and publisher's original wraparound advertising band; [6],7-645,[11]pp; text is entirely in Japanese. Signed by Murakami in Japanese on the title page, directly above his English-language rubber-stamp. Fine in a Fine dustjacket and wraparound band.