Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"The simplistic and beautiful way in which he can evoke dreamlike landscapes, situations and emotions is outstanding." --AU, March 2009
Book Description
A wildly inventive fantasy and a meditation on the many uses of the mind
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
43 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a beautiful book written in Murakami's usual lyrical style that brilliantly conveys the depths and complexities of the human consciousness. It is best described as a combination of genres, including fantasy, science-fiction and detective story, but really it is about one man's journey of self-discovery when he learns that the End of the World is near.
Murakami easily combines two stories that are full of surprises and compliment each other perfectly as the book progresses. The alternating chapters make the book easy to read and they also prove Murakami to be a skilled storyteller, as he so cleverly narrates two parallel tales. His characters are a group of striking individuals that seem at once fantastical and very real. Murakami's descriptions of a man evaluating his life and musing on what he has lost are engrossing and interesting, as well as fresh and inspired.
I loved this book and couldn't wait to start reading it again each time I put it down. I chose this book after having read another novel, Norweigan Wood, by the same author. Having read and truly loved both novels I would recommend Murakami as a brilliant and poetic storyteller with a fantastic imagination. This book is something different and definitely worth reading, even if it's not your normal type of thing!
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the fourth or fifth Murakami book I've read, and quite easily the best after Norwegian Wood.
The book switches between two stories: a wonderfully curious and imaginative adventure through an alternative future-now Japan (Hard-Boiled Wonderland); and a mysterious exploration of a walled old city (the End of the World). The two stories eventually connect in a way that causes a wonderful collision of thoughts and questions in the reader's mind, but I won't give anything away by saying anything more.
Like all good dystopias, this is thoroughly well thought-through and researched; Kafkaesque comes to mind, as does Alice in Wonderland. But this is married with Murakami's postmodernist bent and a feeling that he's having as much fun as you are. Very enjoyable, totally escapist, and you'll want to dive back into this world once you've left it.
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is likely to have a profound effect on anyone that reads it. There are some dreams that have a bleakness about them, a sense of jepoardy and emptiness that carries right through to the next day. You wake feeling detached from the real world and sit for hours lost in your own thoughts. This book taps into that universal feeling, that world sadness that washes over us from time to time.
Murakami manages to draw you into a place that is so different from the mundane routines we inhabit and yet so familiar. This book is compelling, it is complex, it is the human psyche turned into a story. It is, above all, an amazing novel.
Murakami manages to draw you into a place that is so different from the mundane routines we inhabit and yet so familiar. This book is compelling, it is complex, it is the human psyche turned into a story. It is, above all, an amazing novel.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World
This was a wonderful novel, full of humour and imagination, and it takes high place among my other Murakami favourites like "A Wild Sheep Chase", it's kind-of 'sequel' "Dance,... Read more
Published 4 months ago by R. A.
Why did it have to come to an end???
My favourite Murakami novel up to now, i think this guy is a fantasy master. With an ordinary recipe he keeps creating such miracles. Read more
Published 4 months ago by panosstathop
Amazing
This book has revived my love for the written word, from begining to end Murakami transports the reader and makes a world which is wierd as hell seem so believeable. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Spacecrab
How Given Better Average Rating Than His Other Work?
I have to agree with some of the other reviewers who did not think much of this book. It has a couple of nice touches but in general I found it dull, especially when compared to... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Paul J. Blundell
breathtakingly beautiful
A book about unicorns and shadows, set in the real world and the imaginary, that is so beautiful it makes my heart ache. Read more
Published 8 months ago by dandawsinho
brilliant murakami
As always, Murakami makes you think while keeping you in a dream-like state. I'm not going to try and give a big review here - I just wanted to agree with the vast majority how... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Royale
Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End Of the World
This book begins as a surreal sci-fi/ thriller; a first person narrative. A sardonic hero descends into an underground lair of a mad professor. Read more
Published 13 months ago by dickperrin
Waste of time
This is without doubt the worse book I've ever read, the story never really goes anywhere and feels more about the the main charachters observations of life and death rather than... Read more
Published 15 months ago by crow22
His chatty, digressive style is unique and not to be missed
This is a really unusual story - Haruki's conversational, slightly odd-ball style is reassuringly the same even in this early work of his. Read more
Published 16 months ago by L. Hennessy
Fantastic.
This is one of the weirdest, and most interesting books I've ever read. It was strongly recommended to me by a friend and I bought it without any idea of what it would be like. Read more
Published 16 months ago by vwxy
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