Norwegian Wood— Haruki Murakami

While landing at a European airport, Toru Watanabe, a 37-year-old executive, hears an old Beatles song that takes him back to his youth, to the turbulent Tokyo of the 1960s. With a mix of melancholy and unease, Toru then remembers the unstable and mysterious Naoko, the girlfriend of his best and only teenage friend, Kizuki. Kizuki's suicide estranged Toru and Naoko for a year, until they met again and began an intimate relationship. However, the appearance of another woman in Toru's life leads him to experience dazzlement and disillusionment where everything should make sense: sex, love, and death. And none of the characters seems capable of achieving the fragile balance between youthful hopes and the need to find a place in the world.