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The Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Penguin International Writers)
  
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The Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Penguin International Writers) (Paperback)

by Haruki Murakami (Author) "THE elevator continued its impossible slow ascent ..." (more)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (29 Oct 1992)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0140154353
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140154351
  • Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.8 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,199,231 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #82 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > M > Murakami, Haruki

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Product Description

Review

"The simplistic and beautiful way in which he can evoke dreamlike landscapes, situations and emotions is outstanding." --AU, March 2009 --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Description

The narrator, living in Tokyo in the near future, is a fellow aspiring to decency and self-respect. His work is to shuffle numbers for national security. Meanwhile his shadowless unconscious reads dreams gleaned from skulls resembling those of unicorns. by the author of "A Wild Cheese Chase".
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THE elevator continued its impossible slow ascent. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

41 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (41 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, 4 Aug 2003
By AR "bobsafish" (Middlesbrough) - See all my reviews
  
This review is from: Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (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!

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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Two alternative universes for the price of one, 1 Mar 2006
By Mr. Paul J. Bradshaw (Midlands, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (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.

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Dreamscapes, 26 Feb 2007
By L. Cato (Bristol, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Possibly the best novel I've read
I find Murakami hard to unpack at first, but I'm soon rewarded by his boundless imagination, Chandleresque style, and sense of place. Read more
Published 1 month ago by C. Johnson

5.0 out of 5 stars pure pleasure
this is one of the books that will always fill my head with pleasure, just by thinking of it. besides everything else, it also is a great hymn to hope. amazing.
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Cleverly interweaving two different narratives, Murakami's novel is an introspective, slightly pretentious work: the kind of book I used to devour and find highly meangingful as a... Read more
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5.0 out of 5 stars Far from hard-boiled
I just can't get enough of Murakami's dreamy and nebulous prose. This is one of my favourite novels of his, and I adore the way he throws in references to popular culture, whilst... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Barney McGrew

5.0 out of 5 stars A bit hard to get into, but in the end... lovely.
My husband gave me this book and Norwegian Wood as a gift when we first started dating. He said Hardboiled Wonderland was one of his favourite books of all time, and I had to... Read more
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5.0 out of 5 stars hard boiled excellence

What a superb novel- This book lives on in your mind, it has a life outside the pages. Great characters who seem to have so much more to offer than their descriptions.. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Jonathan Hawes

3.0 out of 5 stars Wry humour in a dying fall
This early novel stands halfway between the silliness of A Wild Sheep Chase and the heart-gripping humanity of Norwegian Wood. Read more
Published 17 months ago by John Lynham

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
This is the first Murakami book I've read and I felt compelled to review it afterwards, as it thoroughly engrossed and compelled me. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Ms. Hr Jackson

5.0 out of 5 stars Unicorns at the end of the world
Imagine if Raymond Chandler had collaborated with David Lynch, maybe with Philip K. Dick throwing in a few cents every now and then. Read more
Published 22 months ago by E. A Solinas

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