is a collection of 17 short stories by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The stories were written between 1980 and 1991, and published in Japan in various magazines, then collections. The contents of this compilation were selected by Gary Fisketjon (Murakami's editor at Knopf) and first published in an English translation in 1993 (its Japanese counterpart was released later in 2005). Several of the stories had already appeared (often with alternate translations) in the magazines The New Yorker, Playboy, and The Magazine (Mobil Corp.) before this compilation was published. Stylistically and thematically, the collection aligns with Murakami's previous work. The stories mesh normality with surrealism, and focus on painful issues involving loss, destruction, confusion and loneliness. The title for the book is derived from the final story in the collection. Contents Synopsis "The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday's Women" Note: This story was subsequently updated as the first chapter of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. After being disturbed by a strange phone-call from an unknown woman demanding ten minutes of his time, a man goes in search of his wife's missing cat and meets a girl in a neighbor's garden. "The Second Bakery Attack" A recently married couple in their late twenties lie in bed, famished; they have little in their refrigerator: a six-pack of beer and some cookies. After drinking and eating all of it, the man recounts to his wife a time he and his friend “robbed” a bakery ten years ago. The two intended to take all the bread they could from a bakery by force. The man who ran the bakery offers a counterproposal before the two men can act: since he is a Richard Wagner fanatic, if they listen to Tannhäuser and The Flying Dutchman with him in the bakery, he will give them all the bread they can carry. They agree, and the bread is enough to feed the two men for a few days. After hearing of that story, the woman suggests that they do the same thing, despite it being 2:30 A.M. They drive around Tokyo looking for a bakery but all of them are closed; they “compromise” to “rob” a McDonald's instead. With ski-masks and a Remington automatic shotgun, they enter the restaurant and demand thirty Big Macs. The three employees working there fulfill the peculiar request. The couple then leave the restaurant and drive until they find an empty parking lot; they then