Two nameless voices narrate alternate chapters one from the hard-boiled, dangerous Wonderland of Tokyo above and below ground and one from the peaceful End of the World. The first gets a job from a very eccentric old scientist in his underground lab, where he’s experimenting with removing sound from the world and using a tuning fork to gather information from animal skulls. Meanwhile in the End of the World, where the coming of autumn means that the coats of the unicorns turn to a thick silky gold color, the narrator must go the library to begin his new work: reading the old dreams from the beast skulls kept in the library. As they rush rapidly forward the stories begin to converge.

Intricately plotted, reflective, suspenseful, and compelling this is what a few decades ago would be described as mind-blowing. Once I started it, I found it impossible to put down. This is a masterwork of literary imagination. ( )

You know what to expect of Murakami's novels but the bizarre-ness of Hard-Boiled Wonderland still takes the cake. Nevertheless, you have to applaud the audacity of Murakami. Imagine a world in your brain and you have the choice whether to leave or to stay, with the latter option meaning that you end your life on earth. In this alternative universe, you don't have your memories but you at peace with yourself. What will you choose? ( )

Murakami crafts a spellbinding narrative that merges the gritty underbelly of Tokyo with a surreal, dreamlike world. Through parallel storylines, the book explores profound questions about memory, identity, and the boundaries of reality. Murakami’s vivid imagination and philosophical insights make this a transformative reading experience that challenges perceptions while captivating the senses.

Većina ljudskih aktivnosti počiva na pretpostavci da život teče dalje. Ako uklonimo tu premisu, što ostaje? ( )

An odd and wonderfully appealing parallel tale delving into the neurosciences, literature, music, and 'the self'. ( )

This is my first Murakami novel, though I went into it with some presumption that I would enjoy it as Heibane Renmei is one of my favorite anime of all time. Even if it is only *very* loosely based on the more magical realism skewing of the two so called parallel narratives. Given the (in English) temporal/tense difference in the narratives and the (in Japanese)difference in the pronouns I personally wonder how 'parallel' they truly are. I don't know if it would be so for everyone, but for me at least this combined with my fondness for cyberpunk and pulp noir probably make this the perfect entry point for Murakami, as I'm told its certainly one of the more scifi leaning of his books.
As mentioned, we have two parallel narratives, involving...aspects...of the same protagonist, one a less than crunchy cyberpunk noir (no chummers or cyberspace here) and one set in a strange firmly magically realistic world. Deeply exploring the nature of consciousness through a rather limited cast of characters, and from what I'm told a pretty typical for Murakami amount of drinking and innuendo, this books was beautifully written from start to finish. "Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams."
I've seen an argument that too much magical realism bleeds through for this to be 'true cyberpunk', but given the genre's various founders distaste what it became in terms of stereotypes I think that assertion is on shaky ground. Besides the obvious parallels to Johnny Mnemonic, I definitely see a lot of shared character with Pat Cadigan. And I can't imagine a current day Stephenson or Gibson being anything but in love with this. I also rarely see it mentioned, but especially when we find out enough about the Town to understand how it functions within its own reality, there are some clear shades of Omelas going on here.
After reading this, I'm disappointed it took me so long to pick up a Murakami book, admittedly in part because he was caught up in the hipster craze that included everyone reading Gravity's Rainbow and made me somewhat skeptical. I'm eagerly looking forward to the recent...companion piece...? The City and Its Uncertain Wall. ( )

One of my favorite reads in recent times ( )

I was a bit shocked at the premise of this book and couldn't really wrap my head around it. After I finished I couldn't stop thinking about it and want to reread it. The themes covered help identify what makes us human and individual. It pushes us in the direction of autonomy over safety because it allows us to live our lives to the fullest. ( )

Of the three Murakami novels that I have read, this is my favorite.
I love all the little trippy elements, I love the melancholy. The bizarre surrealism is utterly enjoyable. Its so easy to let the pages fly by and at the same time wonder if you are stuck in someone else's dream. Its super fun. It didn't end the way I wanted - not because I love tidy, happy endings, but because I felt the main character was disloyal to himself. Otherwise, though, this is fantastic. Never look at unicorns or paperclips like I used to! ( )

And after postmodernism and the crumble of men, Murakami comes to us...

“Yessir. Completely sound-free. That’s because sound is of no use to human evolution. In fact, it gets in the way. So we’re going t’wipe sound out, morning to night.”
Hmph. You’re saying there’ll be no birds singing or brooks babbling. No music?”
“ ’Course not.”
“It’s going to be a pretty bleak world, if you ask me.”
“Don’t blame me. That’s evolution. Evolution’s always hard.
(49)

I cannot tell if the thought is mine or if it has floated loose from some fragment of memory. I have lost so many things. I am so tired. I feel myself drifting, away, a little by little. I am overcome by the sensation that I am crumbling, parts of my being drifting away. Which part of me is thinking this?
(132)

You said that the mind is like the wind, but perhaps it is we who are like the wind. Knowing nothing, simply blowing through. Never aging, never dying.
(150)

My confidence is going, it’s true,” I say, dropping my eyes to the circle on the ground. “How can I be strong when I do not know my own mind? I am lost.”
(210)

“Listen. I may not be much, but I’m all I’ve got. Maybe you need a magnifying glass to find my face in my high school graduation photo. Maybe I haven’t got any family or friends. Yes, yes, I know all that. But, strange as it might seem, I’m not entirely dissatisfied with this life. It could be because this split personality of mine has made a stand-up comedy routine of it all. I wouldn’t know, would I? But whatever the reason, I feel pretty much at home with what I am. I don’t want to go anywhere. I don’t want any unicorns behind fences.”
(228-9)

Think about the koan: An arrow is stopped in flight. Well, the death of the body is the flight of the arrow. It’s makin’ a straight line for the brain. No dodgin’ it, not for anyone. People have t’die, the body has t’fall. Time is hurlin’ that arrow forward. And yet, like I was sayin’, thought goes on subdividin’ that time for ever and ever. The paradox becomes real. The arrow never hits.”
(238)

The sky was deep and brilliant, a fixed idea beyond human doubt. From my position on the ground, the sky seemed the logical culmination of all existence. The same with the sea. If you look at the sea for days, the sea is all there is. Quoth Joseph Conrad. A tiny boat cut loose from the fiction of the ship. Aimless, inescapable, inevitable.
(324)
( )

A quote from page 161 of the novel.
"Housewives filed past, leek and daikon radish tops sticking up from supermarket bags. I found myself envying them. They hadn't had their refrigerators raped or their bellies slashed. Leeks and daikon and the kids grades--- all was right with the world. No unicorn skulls or secret codes or consciousness transfers. This was normal everyday life."


But Murakami novels are never normal...


René Descartes stated " I think therefore I am." and Neil Simon asked "Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?"


Well in this novel Murakami asks, in typical Murakami fashion, can two separate consciousness share a mind without causing irrefutable damage to it's owner ?
( )

One of the best books I've read. Hard to describe though... ( )

Murakami's sentences are simple, at least in translation to English, and I sometimes feel underwhelmed as I read him, but I found the totality of this book to be moving. ( )

I dig your worldsense, Mr. Murakami. ( )

Interesting subject matter. EoTW chapters were very engaging (ex: shadow separation). Massive info-dumps about 2/3 of the way through were very off-putting. ( )

This is a strange pair of stories, of forty alternating chapters, each told in the first-person, that gradually show themselves to be related.
If it hadn’t been Murakami, I might not have persisted through the seventy or eighty pages it took to draw me in and would have missed this interesting novel.

There are the odd-numbered chapters, each listing three things, like 'Elevator', 'Dressing', ’Nail Clippers', and the twenty chapters announcing a single concept, such as 'Golden Beasts', 'Dreamreading', 'Skulls'.

One story, the odd-numbered chapters, reads sort of like hard-boiled detective fiction, and follows an operative who makes a good living using his ’split brain’ to code and ’shuffle’ sensitive documents for clients. There is a secretive government entity that oversees his work, and a another secretive and probably private entity trying to undo it.

The other story is of a man who finds himself without memory of his past, in a walled city where he is relieved of his shadow, and told he will gradually learn how to be at home there.

Neither man has a name, and there are few other main characters - two women, a girl, her grandfather who is a, probably brilliant, neuroscientist, a pair of hoods who may or may not be working on their own.

The neuroscientist/grandfather hires the operative, and the stories begin. This character often drones on, explaining the brain, the mind, and this process of shuffling.

There is much more in this novel, much to like, some scenes easily skimmed, much to wonder about, a book for the read-this-again-someday list. ( )

As with all Murakami novels for me, I think reading him is zen practice. It's about the journey, not the plot. I can have no fucking clue what's going on in one moment, think I've grasped the corner of the hem of the whole in another, have a profound life-altering epiphany a moment later, and then be utterly and hopelessly lost the next. Kinda like life itself. The thing about it, though, is that Murakami's worlds are such fertile places that I don't mind taking the ride even if I have no idea where its going. And if I choose to view my own world and life through a Wonderland lens, I don't mind taking the ride, either. ( )

This has to be my favorite of the Murakami I have read so far. His magical realism is stellar, and his use of language, even translated, makes the story even more compelling. ( )

I fear the profundity of this novel was lost on me - I enjoyed reading it, but I can't say I feel like I understood it. I'm also wondering about the translation - there were moments that took me out of the narrative, voices and word choices that didn't ring true. I wish I could read it in the original Japanese to come closer to the true narrative. ( )

Der Held lebt in sich selbst, kämpft sich durch Tokyo und wird am Ende "Endlich Nichdenker".
Gnostik und Jung treffen auf Blade Runner.

http://www.zeit.de/2006/18/L-Murakami1 ( )

oh, man.

i think this is the most structurally perfect novel of his that i've read, and it kind of stunned me. he used every part of the unicorn here. whoah. ( )

I wanted to read this partially b/c I'm so ignorant about Japanese literature. I've listened to alotof Japanese music, witnessed at least a few Japanese films, & read ONE Japanese author (that I can remember at the moment, at least). So what do I choose? A Japanese author who barely references Japanese culture at all! Instead there're references to US culture, Russian culture, etc.. John Ford westerns!

What makes this particularly 'weird' for me is that I've only recently become reinterested in Ford & have actually checked out 2 of the movies that Murakami refers to. Maybe that's not so weird, plenty of people have seen these movies. But then Murakami also references Duke Ellington (who I heard live in the early 1970s), Turgenev (who I've read) - that sort of thing. Sure, these are all fairly mainstream 'western' references but reading them in a Japanese author makes me imagine the writer holed up in some apartment or house somewhere absorbing international culture like a sponge.. like me.

ANYWAY, when I 1st started reading this, it was too much like Kafka or Blanchot - or, more recently, Auster or Lethem. The structure is the classic pulp thing of having alternating threads in alternating chapters that start out so different that one wonders how they cd possibly be connected - & then gradually connecting them. & he[?:]'s good at it - b/c these 2 threads are sortof sci-fi/pulp-cyber-mystery intercut w/ fantasy. Those 2 might seem to be the same to many people but to me they're quite different.

So it grew on me. & grew. & stayed weird w/ how personal it was for me. references to reading Camus' "L'Etranger" in high school. Did Murakami read THAT in high school? Like I did? People always compared me to the main character. Small world. Of course, whenever I think of small world I think of BIG IMPERIALISM & the homogenization of culture. But, still, the relationship between the US, eg, & Japan isn't just so simple as the US bombing Japan into oblivion at the end of so-called WWII & the Japanese being duly obsequious afterward. After all, Japan was probably an even more arrogant imperialist culture at the time than the US was. Let's not forget the "Rape of Nanking", shall we? There's a reason why the Philippines embraced the US & hated the Japanese (if that's true). Whatever, I stray.

I liked this. The writing (or the translation, perhaps?) isn't exactly Nabokov but it whips right along like the pulp that obviously inspired it. &, SHIT!, there's even a part on pp284-285 THAT SAYS SOMETHING THAT I SAID IN MY 1ST BOOK PUBLISHED IN 1977. & that blew my mind. Of course, Murakami has never heard of me or read that book.. STILL, it was weird reading that section - it was almost as if I wrote it. YES, this was a good, fun read for me. I'll read more by Murakami. But I'm still looking for a Japanese author that teaches me more about Japanese culture. I'm still ignorant. ( )

This was one of the last Murakami books I had left to read as I read through all his works. I'm not sure if I'm disappointed I didn't read it earlier or glad to have had it to enjoy near the end. In some ways this was very different from the rest of his books. Usually his books contain small elements of "unreality" (for lack of a better word), but this book didn't really have anything set in the real world although one part was clearly closer to the real world than the other. But of course, the people were all real enough, which is one thing I need to have in any non reality-based story. I would say, like a lot of good plot writers, Murakami is not necessarily an ending writer, so I can't say I understood or was particularly satisfied by the ending, but I didn't really expect to be. His books are journey rather than destination, and the journey is almost never disappointing! ( )

100 Years is Solitude meets Snow Crash. More fantasy/magical realism than sci-fi. 1985 vintage gives it a pass on the magical tech, but the Inklings in the real world? Not my cuppa. ( )

Didn't especially enjoy the ending, but then again, I didn't write it either. I did enjoy the dreamlike quality of the story and, breaking my own rules, I will probably search out and read other Haruki Murakami books. ( )