Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

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 and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's 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.

Review: His fantasies, with their easy reference to western pulp fiction and music, retain a beauty of the mind * Guardian *

A remarkable writer...he captures the common ache of contemporary heart and head -- Jay McInerney

Combines a witty sci-fi pastiche and a dream-like Utopian fantasy in two separate narratives which alternate in an interweave of precognition and deja vu -- Richard Lloyd Parry * Independent *

Here is abundant imagination at play * Sunday Times *

Murakami's bold willingness to go straight-over-the-top has always been a signal indication of his genius...a powerful melange of disillusioned radicalism, keen intelligence, wicked sarcasm and a general allegiance to the surreal. If Murakami is the "voice of a generation," as he is often proclaimed in Japan, then it is the generation of Thomas Pynchon and Don De Lillo * Washington Post *