Book Review: after the quake by Haruki Murakami

 “Beautiful …… Murakami is unique writer, at once  restrained and raw, plainspoken  and poetic.”

                                The Washington  Post Book World.

A long time, I didn’t read something  about Haruki Murakami’s novellas. I was busy to read something  which can not  finish to read because I saw six  stories of Haruki Murakami, and I wanted to read  something new.

I wanted to read after the quake, it was looks interesting book. Is a collection of six short stories by author Haruki Murakami, written between 1999 and 2000. First published in Japan in 2000, it was released in English as after the quake in 2002, it translated  from Japanese by Jay Rubin.

Born in Kyoto, Japan , in 1949. Haruki Murakami grew up in Kobe and lives in near Tokyo. The most recent  of his many honors is the Yomiuri Literary Prize, whose previous recipients include Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe,  and Kobo Abe. His work has been translated into 27 languages.

The stories were written in response to Japan’s 1995 Kobe earthquake, and each story is affected peripherally by the disaster. Along with Underground, a collection of interviews and essays about the 1995 Tokyo gas attacks, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a complex exploration of Japan’s modern history, After the Quake represents part of an effort on the part of Murakami to adopt a more purposeful exploration of the Japanese national conscience.

The stories in After the Quake repeat motifs, themes, and elements common in much of Murakami’s earlier short stories and novels, but also present some notable stylistic changes. All six stories are told in the third person, as opposed to Murakami’s much more familiar first person narrative established in his previous  work.

The six stories in Haruki Murakami’s mesmerizing collection are set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, when Japan became brutally aware of the fragility  of its daily existence. But the upheavals that afflict Murakami’s characters are even deeper and more mysterious, emanating  from a place where the human meets the inhuman.

And electronics salesman who has been abruptly desert by his wife agrees to deliver an enigmatic package and is rewarded with a glimpse of his true nature. A man who has been  raised to view himself as the san  of God pursues a stranger who may not be  his human father. A mild-mannered collection  agent receives a visit from a giant talking frog who enlists  his help in saving  Tokyo  from destruction. As haunting as dreams, as potent as oracles, the stories in after quake are further proof that Murakami is one of the most visionary writers  at work today.

“ His  characters  are so persuasive, and the storytelling  so spacious… Murakami’s crisp, accomplished stories in after the quake have great  immediacy.”   The Seattle Time.

Additionally, only one of the stories contains clear supernatural elements, which are present in the majority of Murakami’s stories. All of the stories are set in February 1995, the month between the Kobe earthquake and the Tokyo gas attacks.

For the characters in after the quake, the Kobe earthquake is an each from a past they buried long ago. Satsuki has spent thirty years hating one man: did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? Miyake left his family in Kobe to make midnight bonfires on a beach hundreds of miles away. 14 year old Sala has nightmares that the Earthquake Man is trying to stuff her inside a little box. Katagiri returns home to find a giant frog in his apartment on a mission to save Tokyo from a massive burrowing worm.” When he gets angry, he causes earthquakes, says Frog. “And right now he is very, very angry.”

And I will start talking briefly about each story. There are six of them and each has a name, but each tells different stories. But the action of each story happens after the Earthquake. He is the engine of events.

I want to tell you about each story, but leaving you to read the book alone and discover for yourself the adventure of the characters you meet after reading.

It is a world of mysteries, loves and self-searches. The life of the characters is filled with searches and personal understandings, but also with questions and answers.

You read and it leaves you with a taste as if you are reading without understanding what is going on around this story. But if you look in their depth, you will understand that you are not reading in vain.

 

 

 

                                                               Write by Bogus Elena