Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Murakami's surreal, mind-bending masterpiece: a sci-fi pastiche and a Utopian fantasy novel ingeniously woven together. A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan. Unicorn skulls and voracious librarians. John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story, post-modern manifesto. All this rolled into one rip-roaring novel, End of the World and Hard-boiled Wonderland is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakamis international following. Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy. A remarkable writer...he captures the common ache of contemporary heart and head Jay McInerney His fantasies, with their easy reference to western pulp fiction and music, retain a beauty of the mind Guardian WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR