"Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage" is a novel by Haruki Murakami, released in 2013 in Japan and in an English translation in 2014.

The title of this book alone can be a bit intimidating, but it makes sense in context. The protagonist, Tsukuru was one of a group of five friends in high school, and was the only one whose family name did not somehow involve a color. He feels different from them, and thinks of himself as "colorless", with color and its lack being a recurrent (and often commented on) theme in the book. The "Years of Pilgrimage" refer to a musical cycle by Frank Liszt, which is used as a leitmotif for the book.

Reading this book, I was helped along by my recent revelation that the appeal of mystery novels is that they are games of sorts, and the impulse to win the game is what propels the reader along. Although Murakami is not writing standard detective stories, his books all present the reader with a mystery, and solving the mystery is what makes me want to keep reading.

Tsukuru was a member of a group of five tight-knit friends in high school, but was inexplicably cast out by them when he left for college, a rejection that still stings him, even as a 36 year old adult professional. Although he has seemingly moved beyond the rejection, his girlfriend urges him to find out what happened between his friends and him 16 years before. The core of the book's action is Tsukuru finding and meeting his friends, and piecing together what happened. It is debatable whether this quest is what the book is actually "about", because there are thematics that seem to be disjointed from the apparent plot of the book. There is, for example, a section told through two intermediary narrators where a jazz pianist talks about his ability to see auras. Unlike some of Murakami's books, the supernatural or fantastic does not play an obvious role in the book, although there are some dreams and vision that could be taken as supernatural.

I am a fan of Murakami, and have read almost all of his books. As a Murakami fan, I found this book intriguing. People who are less enchanted with Murakami's particular blend of the surreal and the commonplace might not find this book as good as I did.