'Murakami shares with Alfred Hitchcock a fascination for ordinary people being suddenly plucked by extraordinary circumstances from their daily lives' Sunday Telegraph
In 1978, Haruki Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in downtown
Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him
suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the
Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following
year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled
Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood,
published in 1987, which turned Murakami from a writer into a
phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were translated into many
languages, including English, and the door was thrown wide open to
Murakami's unique and addictive fictional universe.
Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a
day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance
running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and
races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records
and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I
Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and
they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing
quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of
imaginative inquiry. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,
1Q84 and Men Without Women, his distinctive blend of the mysterious
and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant
readers, ensuring Murakami's place as one of the world's most
acclaimed and well-loved writers.
Murakami shares with Alfred Hitchcock a fascination for ordinary
people being suddenly plucked by extraordinary circumstances from
their daily lives
*Sunday Telegraph*
Not just an impressive essay in witness literature, but also a
unique sounding of the quotidian Japanese mind
*Independent*
A scrupulous and unhistrionic look into the heart of the horror
*Scotsman*
The testimonies he assembles are striking. From the very beginning
Underground is impossibly moving and unexpectedly engrossing
*Time Out*
There is no artifice or pretension in Underground. There is no need
for cleverness. What Murakami describes happens to ordinary people
in a frighteningly ordinary way. And it is all the more bizarre for
that
*Observer*
Murakami shares with Alfred Hitchcock a fascination for ordinary
people being suddenly plucked by extraordinary circumstances from
their daily lives * Sunday Telegraph *
Not just an impressive essay in witness literature, but also a
unique sounding of the quotidian Japanese mind * Independent *
A scrupulous and unhistrionic look into the heart of the horror *
Scotsman *
The testimonies he assembles are striking. From the very beginning
Underground is impossibly moving and unexpectedly engrossing
* Time Out *
There is no artifice or pretension in Underground. There is no need
for cleverness. What Murakami describes happens to ordinary people
in a frighteningly ordinary way. And it is all the more bizarre for
that * Observer *
The deadly Tokyo subway poison gas attack, perpetrated by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult on March 20, 1995, was the fulfillment of every urban straphanger's nightmare. Through interviews with several dozen survivors and former members of Aum, novelist Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) presents an utterly compelling work of reportage that lays bare the soul of contemporary Japan in all its contradictions. The sarin attack exposed Tokyo authorities' total lack of preparation to cope with such fiendish urban terrorism. More interesting, however, is the variety of reactions among the survivors, a cross-section of Japanese citizens. Their individual voices remind us of the great diversity within what is too often viewed from afar as a homogeneous society. What binds most of them is their curious lack of anger at Aum. Chilling, too, is the realization that so many Aum members were intelligent, well-educated persons who tried to fill voids in their lives by following Shoko Asahara, a mad guru who promised salvation through total subordination to his will. For all public and academic libraries. Steven I. Levine, Univ. of Montana, Missoula Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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