Hear the Wind Sing is Murakami's first novel, available for the first time in English outside Japan. 

 In Hear the Wind Sing the narrator is home from college on his summer break. He spends his time drinking beer and smoking in J's Bar with the Rat, listening to the radio, thinking about writing and the women he has slept with, and pursuing  a relationship with a girl with nine fingers. 

The story of the narrator, the Rat and J continues in Pinball, 1973.