Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
is the thirteenth novel by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. Published on 12 April 2013 in Japan, it sold one million copies in one month. The novel is a realist Bildungsroman that tells the story of Japanese railroad engineer Tsukuru Tazaki. When his close-knit group of friends abruptly cuts all relationships with him, a young Tsukuru is left depressed and without answers. Years later, Tsukuru attempts to reconcile with his old friends, embarking on a quest for truth and a pilgrimage for happiness. The English-language edition, translated by Philip Gabriel, was released worldwide on 12 August 2014. It topped the US bestsellers list of BookScan, NPR, and The New York Times in the "Hardcover Fiction" category. Plot Tsukuru Tazaki is a 36-year-old man whose defining features are his love of train stations and that his childhood friends collectively decided to end their friendship with him during his second year at university. He now lives in Tokyo and has started seeing a new girlfriend, Sara Kimoto, who works at a travel agency. As he explains to her over dinner, back in Nagoya his high-school friends were called Ao, Aka, Shiro, and Kuro (Japanese for Blue, Red, White, and Black), nicknamed after a color in their surname, unlike his "colorless" one. They used to do everything together like the five digits of a hand. One day, he received a phone call from his friends where they announced that they no longer wanted to see him or be associated with him, leaving him emotionally crushed. After he overcame that loss and his suicidal impulses, Tsukuru befriended Haida (whose name contains "Gray") at university. They started doing everything together and listened to classical music such as Franz Liszt's Années de pèlerinage. One evening, Haida told him a strange story about his father: when he was a college student, he took a leave from his studies and worked in a secluded hot-springs inn where he met man who called himself Midorikawa (whose name contains "Green"), a jazz pianist from Tokyo who was incredibly talented. Midorikawa also told Haida's father a strange story about himself: One month previously, he had willingly accepted a "death token" condemning him to die two months later unless he could pass it on to another volunteer, but despite his talent, he was tired of his life. This near-death experience opened for him "the doors of perception", making his last weeks more wonderful than the decades he was giving up, and it also made him able to see people's color auras. During these tales, Tsukuru sometimes felt a sort of confusion between himself, Haida, Haida's father, and Midorikawa. Later that night, while Haida slept over on his couch, Tsukuru had a strange erotic dream involving both Shiro and Kuro, who then merged and morphed into Haida before the climax. Tsukuru wondered for himself whether it was all a dream, then Haida didn't show up for the following semester. All he left behind was the boxed set of Years of Pilgrimage he had lent