A version of the Cinderella story from the point of view of one of the ugly stepsisters, in this case young Iris, who blossoms into an interesting person in her own right, even as the beautiful Clara wins the hand of the prince.

Murakami's postmodern venture into science-fiction territory won the Tanizaki Prize, Japan's equivalent of the Pulitzer. In a near-future Japan, the nameless protagonist is a man who has had his brain surgically altered by his employer, the Calcutecs, to encrypt data in a special way. The new client requesting his services turns out to be the extremely eccentric scientist who invented the operation. Suddenly, the protagonist becomes central to a battle among the Calcutecs; their rivals, the Semiotecs; and miscellaneous independent operators intent on gaining control of the scientist's research and getting their hands on a gift given to the protagonist by the scientist: a unicorn skull. This science-fictional story is interleaved with what seems to be a fantasy narrative, in which a nameless protagonist comes to stay in a walled Town where unicorns live and people's shadows have an independent, but weak, existence. This protagonist is assigned the job of "reading dreams"--i.e., picking up psychic impressions--from skulls, and spends his spare time puzzling out what the Town is, how he got there, and how to leave.