Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International)

With the turn of the first page, the reader is confronted with a worn and tattered map of a rural town surrounded by a thick wall much like the medieval towns of Europe. This map contrasts sharply with the opening of the first chapter, in which the protagonist is descending in an elevator reflecting on the sterile, efficient and advanced settings of modern society.

The world Murakami introduces in Chapter One is not really modern-day Tokyo, although it is certainly modeled after that city. Computers and information figure heavily in this book and the novel's protagonist is an employee of System (the good guys), an obscure agency whose purpose is to prevent critical information from falling into the devilish hands of the sinister Factory. The protagonist himself, is a Calcutec, a human encryption device who shuffles data in his mind so that Factory's agents, the Semiotecs, will find it indecipherable. A routine assignment with an eccentric professor, however, sends Calcutec on a whirlwind of a journey that will eventually explore the very depths of his consciousness.

The second world, which we first encounter in Chapter Two, is the small walled town depicted on the worn and tattered map. Here, in this idyllic place, unicorns roam in fields, inhabitants are separated from their shadows, and everyone lives without memory or mind. Each citizen is immortal and each has a specific job which he carries out for eternity. Plunged into this world of confusion, the protagonist is told that he is now the Dreamreader and it is now his job to place his hands on the skulls of dead unicorns and allow the energy inside of them to dissipate between his fingers.

Murakami has divided his book into forty chapters, twenty for each universe, and he alternates between them. The styles he uses to tell the tales of each world are quite different. When in the modern world of pseudo-Tokyo, Murakami uses the past tense and lingers on the details. The story of the walled town, however, is told in the present tense and detail is eschewed for a hazy, diffuse atmosphere, as if the protagonist is suffering from both amnesia and poor eyesight. Fitting, when one considers that he is inhabiting a world where no one has the ability to even think.

As this wildly original novel unfolds, we begin to feel that the two protagonists are two halves of the same person and both worlds may be nothing more than different perceptions of the same reality. At some point, we think, these two disparate worlds must collide. But with Murakami, one never knows. Until the end, that is.

As with Murakami's other novels and stories, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World, has a distinctly Western feel about it. The characters discuss American and European literature, Hollywood and rock music.

Murakami, himself, said that "most Japanese novelists are addicted to the beauty of the language. I'd like to change that...Language is a kind of tool, an instrument to communicate." Murakami has certainly mastered the ability to communicate and he definitely brings something new to Japanese literature. His first-person perspective, his screenplay-style dialogue and his extensive use of colloquial speech all contrive to transport the reader into the world of the protagonist.

Unlike more traditional authors such as Mishima and Kawabata, Murakami uses language informally, not to impress with the beauty or lyricism of his words but to communicate a sense of the protagonist to the reader. As with other Murakami novels, this book dwells on the author's signature themes of alienation and overwhelming despair that is so often a part of our impersonal, overcrowded, modern-day society.

Murakami's novels are literature of the highest order, although they encompass such outlandish plots that their classification as literature might be overlooked. His themes however, always touch on the most existential problems facing society today. Therein lies Murakami's genius, or at least a part of it. He brings a voice to the voiceless individual, the one who feels in danger of being swallowed alive by the impersonal and often overwhelming reach of the information age. His protagonists, though sometimes nameless and sometimes faceless, always manage to shout into the deaf ear of the crazy, mixed-up postmodern world. And, who knows? With Murakami around, we might just work all the craziness out some day.


The Interconnectedness of All Things   February 7, 2000
Bibliophile (New York)
15 out of 16 found this review helpful

This is simply the best book I have ever read! I was hooked from the first page and drawn into the world of the narrator as subtly as one is drawn into a dream. The linking of the subconscious and conscious elements of the mind are at work here, and this is what makes this book all at once so wonderful, disturbing and enlightening. It is a psychological masterpiece and lays bare the interconnectedness of all things- the people in our lives, the places, the choices we make, our dreams, desires, longings and regrets and most importantly, the often inexplicable and enigmatic relationship between our subconscious and conscious mind. The masterful way Murakami interweaves the chapters begins with a divergent simplicity and gradually progresses to a complex, synchronistic web/mandala in which all points share a beginning yet have no end.


Definitely not for everyone   October 16, 1999
15 out of 18 found this review helpful

I bought this on a whim...I've since read everything Murakami has written and Birnbaum translated ("Wind-Up Bird" being the exception, different translator). I was blown away by the juxtaposition of stories...so different, yet with each chapter, the growing chill in the pit of my stomach as I begin to see where it's all going. Murakami is not for everyone...Thank God! How boring if every person you bumped carts with at Safeway also dug (Understood!!) this cryptic writer. There's a reason why he is Japan's most esteemed novelist at work today. I had the intense pleasure of hearing him read at my fave independent book store (His only appearance in the US...he doesn't even do readings in Japan), and the crowd was overwhelmingly Asian, young, achingly hip. The non-Asian faces were a sea of Who's Who of the American writing scene...Murakami rocks!!


A hard rain's a-gonna fall   February 9, 2004
Van Der Zee (Veghel, Netherlands)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

This has been the first Murakami novel I have ever read, and I must say it is by far the best novel I have read in a long time ! I don't think it is right to simply attach a label like "cyberpunk" or "sci-fi" to the book, because I feel the psychological aspects of the journey of a man towards his inner self are the main focus of the book. The sci-fi elements that Murakami uses to set up the plot to me are merely background settings.
It is a well known fact to each living soul on this earth that death is inevitable, and one generally needs a lifetime to accept that. In this case, the main character is forced to complete his acceptation process within a day. While addressing the absurd question of "what would I do on my last conscious day", Murakami manages to create a cold concrete, painfully touching "radiohead"-like atmosphere in which the main character shamefully realizes the total triviality of his life.
The end of the book still lingers in my head, Murakami uses a lot of references to american pop culture throughout the book, but not just for the simple reference itself. When you will have read the book you will understand his last reference to Bob Dylan's "A hard rain's a-gonna fall":

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,

Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.