Born in 1951 in an affluent Tokyo suburb, Hajime (beginning in Japanese) has arrived at middle age wanting for almost nothing. The postwar years have brought him a fine marriage, two daughters, and an enviable career as the proprietor of two jazz clubs. Yet a nagging sense of inauthenticity about his success threatens Hajime\047s happiness. And a boyhood memory of a wise, lonely girl named Shimamoto clouds his heart.\012When Shimamoto shows up one rainy night, now a breathtaking beauty with a secret from which she is unable to escape, the fault lines of doubt in Hajime\047s quotidian existence begin to give way. And the details of stolen moments past and present a Nat King Cole melody, a face pressed against a window, a handful of ashes drifting downriver to the sea threaten to undo him completely. Rich, mysterious, quietly dazzling, South of the Border, West of the Sun is Haruki Murakami\047s wisest and most compelling fiction.