Two babies are left in a Tokyo station coin locker and survive against the odds, but their lives are forever tainted by this inauspicious start.As they grow up, they join the ranks of Toxitown: a district of addicts, freaks and prostitutes. One becomes a bisexual rockstar and looks for his mother, while the other one, an athlete, seeks revenge. This savage and stunning story unfolds in a surrealistic whirl of violence.

In high school, Tsukuru Tazaki belonged to an extremely tight-knit group of friends who pledged to stay together forever. But when Tsukuru returns home from his first year of college in Tokyo, he finds that they want nothing to do with him. Something has changed, but nobody will tell him what - and he never sees them again.

It's a set-up like a video game: two rival gangs fight to death for the control of a Tokyo district. In one gang, six young losers committed only to drinking, voyeurism and karaoke singing, in the other six tough independent older women. From ambush to revenge, both groups are gradually decimated until the ultimate showdown. In Murakami's inimitably brutal and brilliant style, Popular Hits dissects the gender and generational conflicts of contemporary society in a hilarious satire.

In a small, inconsequential city in Japan, all that matters to 17-year-old Kensuke Yazaki and his friends is girls, rock music and, to amuch lesser extent, school. Told at high speed and with irresistible humour by Kensuke himself, this is the story of their 1969, as they engage in heated conversations about Marxism, Rimbaud, Godard, the Beatles and the Stones, set up a barricade in their school, organise a rock festival and map out a highly successful strategy in girl-winning.