Monday, October 3, 2016

Danish Version of Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 to Appear on October 14

Murakami's Danish publisher, Klim, has announced the approaching appearance of the Danish translation of Murakami's first two books, "Pinball 1973" and "Hear the Wind Sing." Translated by Mette Holm, both titles will appear together in one volume on October 14.

Below you can see the somewhat somber but beautiful cover (on the left) and another image (on the right) that I found on a different page. It seems that the book has been designed like the Portuguese and Dutch translations (see the posts of August 23, 2016 and September 16, 2014), where there are two front covers, so that the book can be flipped to read the other novel from the other side.





Mette Holm has just sent me the picture on the left, which shows that it's the sleeve, not the book, that is black. The book appears to be white.













Readers will note from the Danish title, "Flipperspil 1973," that we have here another case (in addition to Polish, Dutch, French, Norwegian, and Portuguese), where the word for "pinball" is derived from the word "flipper."

Which reminds me that I recently ran across this image of a "Murakami pinball machine" from a year ago. Machines like this were apparently set up in two Waterstones bookstores (the London - Piccadilly and Glasgow branches) to celebrate the publication of the books in the UK. Waterstones in Piccadilly Circus claims to be the largest bookstore in Europe, and Waterstones Glasgow on Sauchiehall Street, the biggest in Scotland. You can see more pictures here. It looks like the highest scores won signed copies of the book.