The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Japan’s most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.
([source][1])

[1]: http://www.harukimurakami.com/book/the-wind-up-bird-chronicle

This was a like a long extended dream. The kind you have at 4am. The kind that wake you up and wonder - how could it be so vivid and SO absurd? You remember parts of it like it really happened and other parts you just cannot recollect no matter how hard you try.

Yep, this was just a dream. And I'm sure it'll be different when I read it again. And that I will.

I put the book down and had no idea what had happened during the last 600+ pages. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy it a lot - I enjoyed it quite a bit - just don't ask me to describe or explain anything because it will sound exactly like when someone describes a dream (in other words, disjointed nonsense). Having said all that, I couldn't NOT finish the book. It was like the book was a force compelling me to keep reading it. And I'm glad I did keep reading because even though I don't understand what it was all about, it kept me entertained.

Precise rating: 3.5 ⭐

I read like 9/10ths of this book before I left for the States and was LOVING it. And then I didn't want to bring such a big book with me on the plane when I had hardly any left to read, and then when I came back and finished it I was a little like, what? It was almost shocking to abruptly re-enter the vaguely magical world Murakami had painstakingly set up throughout the book. Still though, wonderful.