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Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
 
 
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Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Paperback)

by Haruki Murakami (Author, Translator) "THE elevator continued its impossible slow ascent ..." (more)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 416 pages
  • Publisher: The Harvill Press; New edition edition (28 Sep 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1860469051
  • ISBN-13: 978-1860469053
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 656,411 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

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

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Product Description

Review

"Murakami's bold willingness to go straight over the top is a signal indication of his genius... a world class writer who has both eyes open and takes big risks" Washington Post; "He has become the foremost representative of the new style of Japanese writing: hip, cynical, highly stylized, set at the juncture of cyberpunk, postmodernism and hard-boiled detective fiction... Murakami is adept at outrageous wit, outrageous style" Los Angeles Times


Product Description

The contemporary and the mythic collide in a hard-boiled tale of computers and conspiracy theories, unicorns and ancient lands. Winner of the Tanizaki Literary Prize.
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Inside This Book (Learn More)
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First Sentence
THE elevator continued its impossible slow ascent. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

40 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (40 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 Ms. Aa Robson "bobsafish" (Middlesbrough) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
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 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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13 of 13 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 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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