Haruki Murakami has lost his magic.
After two consecutive novels written in the third person (2009's "1Q84" and 2013's "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage"), Murakami has returned to first-person narration with his latest novel, "Kishidancho Goroshi" ("Killing Commendatore"), published in Japan and so far only in Japanese, on Feb. 24. In it, he is unable to capture the same energy of the wry, poignant protagonists that drove his books in the 1980s and '90s.
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