After the Quake

Format:	Paperback 144 pages

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Synopsis

The economy was booming. People had more money than they knew what to do with. And then the earthquake struck. For the characters in After the Quake, the Kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago. Satsuki has spent thirty years hating one man: a lover who destroyed her chances of having children. Did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? Junpei's estranged parents live in Kobe. Should he contact them? Miyake left his family in Kobe to make midnight bonfires on a beach hundreds of miles away. Fourteen-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.'This new collection of stories, from one of the world's greatest living writers, dissects the violence beneath the surface of modern Japan.

Book details

Published
06/03/2003

Publisher
Vintage

ISBN
9780099448563

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket review

"Murakami's storytelling inspires intimacy. It's the particular kind of intimacy that can evolve between a reader and a book, unspoken and unexpected, familiar, satisfying, strange" JANE MENDELSOHN, Village Voice "Western critics searching for parallels have variously likened him to Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C. Clarke, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Pynchon - a roster so ill assorted as to suggest that Murakami may in fact be an original" JAMIE JAMES, New York Times

UK Kirkus review

The menacing little seismographic printout on the translucent dustjacket of this stylishly produced book says it all. This short collection of six stories - few of them taking more than 15 minutes to read - take their origin from the devastating earthquake that hit Kobe in Japan not long ago. None of the stories in this collection are directly connected with the disaster, though all of them are touched by it in one way or another. Each is set in its own odd little world. The opening story deals with an unhappily divorced man who goes on an enforced holiday only to develop sexual problems due to a mysterious wooden cube in his airplane luggage. Then there follows a short tale about a disaffected family man who likes to build bonfires on the beach at midnight. Best of all is the story of Mr Katagiri, who comes home one evening to find a giant frog in his apartment, intent upon having the poor chap help him save all Tokyo from disaster by burrowing down into the earth and confronting an immense and angry worm. Murakami is a world-renowned writer, a master of alienated characters in a disturbing world. (Kirkus UK)