WHEN HARUKI MURAKAMI’S “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” was translated and published in the US in 1997, Murakami was hardly a household name. This was true even among those who regularly rustled through the pages of The New Yorker and The Village Voice in a conspicuous fashion at indie bookstores, while yearning to catch the eye of a literate and hopefully attractive potential mate. But now more than a decade later, not having read a Murakami novel means being ostracized at cocktail parties, with a proverbial scarlet letter P—for philistine—etched onto your hipster clothing.

Most critics and fans alike consider “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” as the feather in Murakami’s hat, and this epic novel featuring labyrinthine narrative threads and multiple levels of reality and surreality has just been adapted for the stage in the form of a multimedia production. Co-presented with the Baryshnikov Arts Center, “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” Multimedia Theater Production is playing at the Ohio Theatre in NYC until January 30. (Check windupbc.com for details.)

The novel chronicles its protagonist Toru Okada’s search for his missing wife and cat that becomes more and more Kafkaesque. And appropriately enough, director Stephen Earnhart combines elements of traditional theater, live avant-garde music, cinematic video, dance, and puppetry to mirror its dreamlike nature.

“In the end, I want it to feel like when you leave this theater, you’re caught somewhere between the world of dreams and reality, which is exactly how I feel when I read a Murakami novel,” says Earnhart. And he pushes the Brechtian boundaries even further by having the crucial character of the old World War II veteran—and witness of atrocities—speak in Japanese while the other main characters speak in English.

Looks like 2010 will be a banner year for adaptations of Murakami’s novels. His phenomenally popular “Norwegian Wood” is being adapted for the big screen in a pan-Asian production helmed by the award-winning Vietnamese-American director Tran Anh Hung and will be released later this year. There’s still time to read the book first!

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