In 1969 we were seventeen. We listened to the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors, the Velvet Underground, the Grateful Dead, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Bob Dylan. We read Rimbaud, played guitars, smoked pot, fell in love, rebelled against the establishment, protested the war in Vietnam, barricaded our high school, and produced the first rock festival in our home town-a small city in a remote southwestern corner of Japan... SIXTY-NINE is a roman à clef about coming of age during a time that left its mark on baby boomers around the world-a time when we really believed we could change the world before it changed us. By turns hilarious, cynical, frivolous, and poignant, the book is infused from start to finish with Ryu Murakami's relentless energy and optimism; it simply refuses to get tedious, preachy, or "literary" for a single moment.
Author
Ryū Murakami (村上 龍) is a Japanese novelist and filmmaker. He is not related to Haruki Murakami or Takashi Murakami. Murakami's first work, the short novel Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a student, deals with promiscuity and drug use among disaffected Japanese youth. Critically acclaimed as a new style of literature, it won the newcomer's literature prize in 1976 despite some observers decrying it as decadent. Later the same year, Blue won the Akutagawa Prize, going on to become a best seller. In 1980, Murakami published the much longer novel Coin Locker Babies, again to critical acclaim. Takashi Miike's feature film Audition (1999) was based on one of his novels. Murakami reportedly liked it so much he gave Miike his blessing to adapt Coin Locker Babies. The screen play was worked on by director Jordan Galland. However, Miike could not raise funding for the project. An adaptation directed by Michele Civetta is currently in production. Murakami has played drums for a rock group called Coelacanth and hosted a TV talk show.
