Dance Dance Dance

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**Title** **Dance Dance Dance**

Author	Haruki Murakami
Original title	ダンス・ダンス・ダンス Dansu dansu dansu
Translator	Alfred Birnbaum
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Kodansha International (JPN)
Released	January 1994
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	393 pp
ISBN	ISBN 4-7700-1683-2
Preceded by	Norwegian Wood
Followed by	South of the Border, West of the Sun

Dance Dance Dance (ダンス・ダンス・ダンス, Dansu dansu dansu^?) is the sixth novel by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, first published in 1988. The English translation by Alfred Birnbaum was released in 1994. The book is a sequel to Murakami's novel A Wild Sheep Chase, although the plot lines are not entirely contiguous.

1 Plot summary
2 Major themes
3 Book information
4 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The novel follows the surreal misadventures of an unnamed protagonist who makes a living as a commercial writer. The protagonist is compelled to return to the Dolphin Hotel, a seedy establishment where he once spent the night with a woman he loved, despite the fact he never knew her real name and addressed her only as "Kiki." Kiki has since disappeared without a trace, and the Dolphin Hotel has been purchased by a large corporation and converted into a slick, fashionable, western-style hotel.

The protagonist begins experiencing dreams in which Kiki and the Sheep Man — a strange individual dressed in an old sheep skin who speaks in a monotonous rush — appear to him and lead him to uncover two mysteries. The first is metaphysical in nature, viz. how to survive the unsurvivable. The second is the murder of a call-girl in which an old school friend of the protagonist, now a famous film actor, is a prime suspect. Along the way, the protagonist meets a clairvoyant and troubled 13-year-old girl, her equally troubled parents, a one-armed poet, and a sympathetic receptionist.

[edit] Major themes

Several of the novel's themes are hallmarks of Murakami's writing. Dance Dance Dance deals with themes of loss and abandonment, as do many of Murakami's other novels. Often, the male protagonist in a Murakami novel will lose a mother, spouse, or girlfriend. Other common Murakami themes this novel addresses are those of alienation, absurdity, and the ultimate discovery of a human connection.

There is a character in the story named Hikaru Makimura, which is an anagram of "Haruki Murakami." Makimura is also a best selling author.