This is an excellent guide to Haruki Murakami's extraordinary novel. It features a biography of the author (including an interview), a full-length analysis of the novel, and a great deal more. If you're studying this novel, reading it for your book club, or if you simply want to know more about it, you'll find this guide informative and helpful. This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years - from 'The Remains of the Day' to 'White Teeth'. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question.

"What can you say about a 22-year-old girl who saves an accidental druggy from killing himself and a whole batch of nincompoops from getting arrested by risking her own life? A hero, isn't it? Well, I call her an idiot, a stupid fool, a gorgeous, fabulous, bubbly, happy, talkative, bold chick! I call her my best friend... The one who helped me, a stupid phobic douchebag, recover from all his problems during his MBA. She never gave up on me. But today, she gave up on herself. She is dying, and if I don’t make it in time we might just lose her forever.” Inspired by a true story, the book deals with the tale of an odd group of friends – one girl and four boys – who studied together at a top B-school in India in 2009; now in 2019, the girl attempts suicide. Her best friend rushes to see her. He informs the other friends and they gather from different cities, cooking up stories to their wives. The story flies back and forth between two time periods – 2009 and 2019. It draws a sea of contrast between our tough, responsibility-laden married years of the 30s and the break-ups, make-ups, pressures of studies and placements of the 20s – an ‘American Pie’ like college life full of vivacity, parties, bakar, swirling rainbows in the head of an accidental druggy and a secret society of lesbians and bisexuals. A life that leads to a suicide attempt, unraveling an UNSAID story of wild DOMESTIC VIOLENCE existing across urban India. This story is about rising above, f*cking things up and figuring life eventually.