Though he grows up to have an impressive job as an engineer of train stations, he dismisses it as merely a mechanical skill at being able to organize things. In contrast, Tsukuru is colourless not just in name, but in personality - he believes he is extraordinary only in being absolutely ordinary, and even wonders what he brings to the group’s friendship.

They each have vibrant personalities as well, colourful characters to match colourful names - one is an intellectual, another is a jock, a third is a beautiful musician and the fourth is a comedian. The title of the book comes from an inside joke among Tsukuru’s friends, that with the exception of Tsukuru, all of them have colours in their names - red, blue, white, black. Rather, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is about discovering oneself, about coming to an understanding about one’s place in the world, and about how childhood experiences will have power over us long into adulthood. The mystery behind the betrayal propels the story forward, but discovering the answer is far from the core of the story. Something has happened, but none of his friends would tell him what. The novel takes place years later, when Tsukuru, now in his 30s, takes his girlfriend Sara’s advice to solve the mystery that has haunted him since: why did his friends reject him so completely and so suddenly? Yet in college, Tsukuru is kicked out of the group with explanation. Tsukuru Tazaki grew up with a tight-knit group of five friends in high school, the kind of friendship children imagine will last forever. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Year of Pilgrimage marks the author’s return away from the sprawling, surrealistic narrative style of 2011’s 1Q84 to the lyrical realism of 1987’s Norwegian Wood. “From July of his sophomore year in college until the following January, all Tsukuru Tazaki could think about was dying.” So begins one of Haruki Murakami’s loveliest, most lyrical novels ever.

Colourless tsukuru