South of the Border, West of the Sun (国境の南、太陽の西, Kokkyō no Minami, Taiyō no Nishi) is a short novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, first published in 1992.

The novel tells the story of Hajime, from his childhood in a small town in Japan to his adult years in Tokyo.

Meeting Shimamoto again sets off a chain of events that forces Hajime to choose between his young family and the magic of the past.

Later, with his father-in-law's capital, he opens a jazz club, and according to his benefactor's wishes invests his earnings into the stock market and real estate.

They spend long afternoons in her living room listening to Liszt and Nat King Cole on her father's stereo, and talking with a pre-adolescent openness that becomes erotic only in retrospect.

[4] The first half of the title refers to the song "South of the Border"; the story features a fictional recording by Nat King Cole.

[5] The other half of the title refers to an Inuit syndrome called Piblokto or Arctic (or Siberian) hysteria.

In the novel, Shimamoto compares her ennui to "hysteria siberiana",[6][7] explaining through a story:[8] Try to imagine this, you’re a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra.

[10] Publishers Weekly called the novel an "oddly gripping, often dreamlike tale" and, with its ending, demonstrative of a "more mellow aspect than his work has exhibited before.

"[11] Mary Hawthorne, in The New York Times, lauded Murakami's writing of sexuality for its ability to "make intimacy real—appealing and unembarrassing, innocent even" and that the novel was a "wise and beautiful book ... full of hidden truths.