Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

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Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Haruki Murakami

November 17, 2010 / 418 pages / Fiction

In this hyperkinetic and relentlessly inventive novel, Japan's most popular (and controversial) fiction writer hurtles into the consciousness of the West. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World draws readers into a narrative particle accelerator in which a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is simultaneously cooler than zero and unaffectedly affecting, a hilariously funny and deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Science Fiction

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Fairy tales

Psychology

Apathy

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This is a very strange novel that kept me reading all the way through. It's a really good look at fantasy vs. reality and which one is truer.

Grade: A+ / NekroMarshall / Sep 3, 2013

Basically this book has all the problems you'd expect from Murakami. It's very poorly written. Murakami's style is simple, borderline primitive, and yet at each opportunity he launches into pointless digressions that add nothing to the story and never help the reader relate to the characters. I don't know if it's an attempt to win Western readers (if so, he succeeded) or he just enjoys it, but the amount of references to European and American culture is kind of unhealthy. Everywhere the main ch

Grade: C / vaxis / Feb 13, 2014

Imagine that you jumped into your favourite painting, the painting hasnt changed because you jumped in and now you can see the colours, the imagery and you can feel the general mood. But now you also realise that you are real, but you are in a painting, these alternate realities and fantasies are both being experienced, both have their place in your world. You hear a song in reality, you try to remember the words of that song in the painting, then you realise that there is a link, you just did

Grade: A / Bender / Feb 18, 2014

In Franz Kafka's often-overshadowed novel The Castle the main character is a land surveyor, who spends the entirety of the story trying to gain entry into a big walled castle to do his job. His efforts are basically to no real end, until he is finally told he is going to be allowed in while he is on his death bed. Haruki Murakami is often compared to Kafka, and I would say that Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the first of his novels that I have read in which this influence is

Grade: A / BeardedHeckler / Aug 31, 2015

I'm not going to lie this was a hard read for me. This was my first book by Haruki Marukami and I thought I could just jump right in any book but apparently I was wrong about that, and that's partly my fault. This book was just so confusing to me until the end but even at the end I never fully understood. I don't even think it's possible to give a summary on this book but to give you an idea it follows two plotlines: one based in reality-ish?? And one based in a more fantasy type world and they

Grade: C / jennamorgan / Dec 27, 2016

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