Theodore William Goossen

Haruki Murakami

Philip Gabriel

A publishing event: a major new, epic novel from the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of 1Q84 and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. A thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist's home, and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors. A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art--as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby--Killing Commendatore is a stunning work of imagination from one of our greatest writers.

A Novel

Killing Commendatore

Mathias Hellsing

Abdul H

Our lives really do seem strange and mysterious when you look back on them. Filled with unbelievably bizarre coincidences and unpredictable, zigzagging developments. While they are unfolding, it’s hard to see anything weird about them, no matter how closely you pay attention to your surroundings. In the midst of the everyday, these things may strike you as simply ordinary things, a matter of course. They might not be logical, but time has to pass before you can see if something is logical.

In the same way that people stare up at the sky to see the moon every night, yet understand next to nothing about it.

What I wanted, or needed, was the spark of that positive will. That definite source of warmth needed to live.

You can have all the desire and ache inside you want, but what you really need is a concrete starting point.

From a distance, most things look beautiful.

To paint a vibrant portrait you need the skill to discover what lies at the core of the person’s face. A face is like reading a palm. 

More than the features you’re born with, a face is gradually formed over the passage of time, through all the experiences a person goes through, and no two faces are alike.

I couldn’t help but sense, deep within his smile, a solitude that comes from a certain sort of secret. 

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