First American PublicationThis stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time.آ آ It is sure to be a literary event.Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before.آ آ Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable.آ آ As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.