Product Description

Japan's most widely-read and controversial writer, author of A Wild Sheep Chase, hurtles into the consciousness of the West with this narrative about a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters--not to mention Bob Dylan and Lauren Bacall.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5792 in Books
• Published on: 1993-03-02
• Released on: 1993-03-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Murakami's lightning prose more than sustains the elaborate plot of this thriller, set in a Tokyo of the near future.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The last surviving victim of an experiment that implanted the subjects' heads with electrodes that decipher coded messages is the unnamed narrator of this excellent book by Murakami, one of Japan's best-selling novelists and winner of the prestigious Tanizaki prize. Half the chapters are set in Tokyo, where the narrator negotiates underground worlds populated by INKlings, dodges opponents of both sides of a raging high-tech infowar, and engages in an affair with a beautiful librarian with a gargantuan appetite. In alternating chapters he tries to reunite with his mind and his shadow, from which he has been severed by the grim, dark "replacement" consciousness implanted in him by a dotty neurophysiologist. Both worlds share the unearthly theme of unicorn skulls that moan and glow. Murakami's fast-paced style, full of hip internationalism, slangy allegory, and intrigue, has been adroitly translated. Murakami is also author of A Wild Sheep Chase ( LJ 10/15/89); his new work is recommended for academic libraries and public libraries emphasizing serious contemporary fiction.
- D.E. Perushek, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Winner of the Tanizaki Literary prize (the Japanese equivalent of the Pulitzer), by acclaimed young Japanese novelist Murakami: a stunning combination of the contemporary and brash with elegiac allegory, all topped off by a strong measure of cyberpunk. The ``hard-boiled'' hero, 35 and divorced, is a man of possessions--a collection of imported whiskeys; interests--old American movies and cooking; but no emotions. Which, coupled with his brilliant work on computers, makes him the ideal candidate for a mysterious aging scientist holed up under the sewers of Tokyo. Here, protected by a waterfall and by flesh-devouring creatures, the INKlings, from the two competing information organizations that control everything in the country, the scientist has devised a perfect secret code by operating on the brains of selected computer workers. The hero, summoned to the scientist's lair, is presented with a unicorn's skull and told of a project called ``The End of the World.'' Alternating between these encounters with the scientist, the scientist's granddaughter, and bully-boys bent on finding out what he knows, there is the story of the ancient walled town at the end of the world. In this home of one-horned beasts, a young man arrives, is separated from his shadow, and is set to work interpreting the dreams of the skulls in the library. The two worlds increasingly connect and at the end fuse, with the hero, though certifiably dead, for the first time morally and emotionally alive and resistant to the society's pervasive control of the individual. One of those rare postmodern novels that is as intellectually profound as stylistically accomplished, by a writer with a bold and original vision. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

A hard rain's a-gonna fall
This has been the first Murakami novel I have ever read, and I must say it is by far the best novel I have read in a long time ! I don't think it is right to simply attach a label like "cyberpunk" or "sci-fi" to the book, because I feel the psychological aspects of the journey of a man towards his inner self are the main focus of the book. The sci-fi elements that Murakami uses to set up the plot to me are merely background settings.
It is a well known fact to each living soul on this earth that death is inevitable, and one generally needs a lifetime to accept that. In this case, the main character is forced to complete his acceptation process within a day. While addressing the absurd question of "what would I do on my last conscious day", Murakami manages to create a cold concrete, painfully touching "radiohead"-like atmosphere in which the main character shamefully realizes the total triviality of his life.
The end of the book still lingers in my head, Murakami uses a lot of references to american pop culture throughout the book, but not just for the simple reference itself. When you will have read the book you will understand his last reference to Bob Dylan's "A hard rain's a-gonna fall":

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,

Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

One of the best books I've ever bought on a whim...
I purchased this book on a whim - the descriptions sounded interesting enough to merit a look.

Boy was I stunned by it. One of the best books I've read in a long time and probably one of the best novels I've read that's been written in the last 20 years.

Beautifully written (and translated) it spoke to many different sides of me. The novel brilliantly fuses a number of different cultural genres (science fiction, mystery, film noir, fantasy, magical realism, "cyberpunk") into a mix that, amazingly, works very well. Try to imagine a collaborative effort by Garcia-Marquez, William Gibson, and Walker Percy and you almost might be able to envision what this book feels like to read. Who else but a Japanese author could make such an intriguing pop culture cocktail?

Besides being a genre-bender, the premise of the book and the questions that it raises concerning the relationship between humanity and technology, the soul and the mind, and the individual and society are quite thought provoking.

Did I mention that the book is very funny at times too?

This is unlike any other book you'll ever read. Definitely worth checking out IMHO.

Abstruse has never seemed more avant-garde
If there was a genre here to bend, break, or quite simply shatter, this book wouldn't be so much genre-defying as it would a two-ton genre wrecking ball.

Many precedents are at once acknowledged and seamlessly woven into an intricate whole; Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, Jorge Borges, Robert Heinlein. Seemingly incongruent styles are melded, switched, convoluted, and turned outside backward.

Not to disclose too much, but the dexterity with which Murakami flits between mirroring realities, (between chapters, no less!) is conceptually breathtaking.

The imagery is so well written and imbued with so much poetic vividity, there are scenes that will resonate in your minds eye for hours after you have turned the page.

In short, there is no preparing yourself for the literary trip you will take with Haruki as your mind-bending guide.