An Adventure Surrounding Sheep, Murakami’s third novel, the original story was set in the ’70s, but Birnbaum, had “American—particularly New York American—readers in mind,” and believed they wanted something “contemporary.” So for the book’s 1989 publication in the United States, they took out obvious references to the time period. They also added a slight nod to a Ronald Reagan speech that was made after the time period of the book, and changed the title to A Wild Sheep Chase