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Title details for After the Quake by Haruki Murakami - Available

After the Quake

Stories

by Haruki Murakami
Rupert Degas
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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In 1995, the physical and social landscape of Japan was transformed by two events: the Kobe earthquake, in January, which destroyed thousands of lives, and the poison-gas attacks in the Tokyo subways in March, during the morning rush hour. Following these twin disasters, Haruki Murakami abandoned his life abroad and returned home to confront his country’s grief. The subway attack led to his recent Underground. And out of the quake come these six stories, set in the months between natural catastrophe and man-made terrorism. His characters find their resolutely normal everyday lives undone by events even more surreal (yet somehow believable) than we have come to expect in his fiction.
An electronics salesman, abruptly deserted by his wife, is entrusted to deliver a mysterious package but gets more than he bargained for at the receiving end; a Thai chauffeur takes his troubled charge to a seer, who penetrates her deepest sorrow; and, in the unforgettable title story, a boy acknowledges a shattering secret about his past that will change his life forever.
But the most compelling character of all is the earthquake itself—slipping into and out of view almost imperceptibly, but nonetheless reaching deep into the lives of these forlorn citizens of the apocalypse. The terrible damage visible all around is, in fact, less extreme than the inconsolable howl of a nation indelibly scarred—an experience in which Murakami discovers many truths about compassion, courage, and the nature of human suffering.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 7, 2014

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780804166621
      • File size: 125023 KB
      • Duration: 04:20:27

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from July 29, 2002
      These six stories, all loosely connected to the disastrous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, are Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; Norwegian Wood) at his best. The writer, who returned to live in Japan after the Kobe earthquake, measures his country's suffering and finds reassurance in the inevitability that love will surmount tragedy, mustering his casually elegant prose and keen sense of the absurd in the service of healing. In "Honey Pie," Junpei, a gentle, caring man, loses his would-be sweetheart, Sayoko, when his aggressive best friend, Takatsuki, marries her. They have a child, Sala. He remains close friends with them and becomes even closer after they divorce, but still cannot bring himself to declare his love for Sayoko. Sala is traumatized by the quake and Junpei concocts a wonderful allegorical tale to ease her hurt and give himself the courage to reveal his love for Sayoko. In "UFO in Kushiro" the horrors of the quake inspire a woman to leave her perfectly respectable and loving husband, Komura, because "you have nothing inside you that you can give me." Komura then has a surreal experience that more or less confirms his wife's assessment. The theme of nothingness is revisited in the powerful "Thailand," in which a female doctor who is on vacation in Thailand and very bitter after a divorce, encounters a mysterious old woman who tells her "There is a stone inside your body.... You must get rid of the stone. Otherwise, after you die and are cremated, only the stone will remain." The remaining stories are of equal quality, the characters fully developed and memorable. Murakami has created a series of small masterpieces. (Aug. 20)Forecast:The thematic urgency of this collection should give readers an extra reason to pick it up; Murakami's track record will do the rest.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Published in 2002 in Japan, these six stories center around the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Contrary to what listeners have come to expect from Americans writing about disasters close to home, there's little if any shock value here. Everything is extremely subtle, and almost nothing is resolved: the bored wife glued to the television and the child haunted by the Earthquake Man remain on the periphery of the stories. Rarely do tales of this literary caliber, especially from an unfamiliar culture, make such a smooth transition to audio. The three British narrators are more than competent, though the characters' names are strange to their ears as well as ours, and they tend to overemphasize the high pitch of women's voices. R.R. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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