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After the Quake: Stories by Haruki Murakami
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After the Quake: Stories (original 2000; edition 2003)

by Haruki Murakami (Author), Jay Rubin (Translator)

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4,0791082,918 (3.77)329
Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. Short Stories. HTML:Set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, the mesmerizing stories in After the Quake are as haunting as dreams and as potent as oracles.

An electronics salesman who has been deserted by his wife agrees to deliver an enigmatic packageâ?? and is rewarded with a glimpse of his true nature. A man who views himself as the son of God pursues a stranger who may be his human father. A mild-mannered collection agent receives a visit from a giant talking frog who enlists his help in saving Tokyo from destruction. The six stories in this collection come from the deep and mysterious place where the human meets the inhumanâ??and are further proof that Murakami is one of the most visionary writers at work… (more)
Member:Bellyn
Title:After the Quake: Stories
Authors:Haruki Murakami (Author)
Other authors:Jay Rubin (Translator)
Info:Vintage (2003), 147 pages
Collections:Your library
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After the Quake by Haruki Murakami (2000)

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» See also 329 mentions

English (96)  Spanish (4)  Dutch (3)  French (2)  Norwegian (1)  German (1)  Danish (1)  All languages (108)
Showing 1-5 of 96 (next | show all)
A nice collection of unique little stories by Murakami, each one memorable in it's own way. I always love reading his stories, and many times I will re-read them right away, thinking "what did I just read?". A beautiful little book, that can be stuck in a coat pocket and read in the park while enjoying the day after a nice walk... ( )
  CRChapin | Jul 8, 2023 |
Not my favorite collection, or it just hit me wrong this time. Actual notes:
Ugh. Are all men toxic? I think I'm past this phase. But some of it was still good. ( )
  Kiramke | Jun 27, 2023 |
Six stories, all very Murakami, all good. ( )
  mykl-s | Jun 12, 2023 |
Each of the stories in this collection is set one month after the devastating 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan. That alone is the tie that binds and even then it is loosely bound. The earthquake is peripheral to each story at best and yet there is something decidedly central about its occurance. These stories feel like the ripples on a lake into which the earthquake has been thrown.

For me, Murakami's genius lies in his ability to craft such distinct and powerful characters. He tells profound truths through simple storytelling and earnest protagonists. The value of life, the importance of connecting with other human beings, the intense psychic power that disaster and trauma bring about in humans is delicately and beautifully explored in this short collection. ( )
  Jess.Stetson | Apr 4, 2023 |
I should start by saying, that generally, I actually prefer short stories as they tend to have a great flow, absorb you easily and finish before they become tedious or boring and generally leave you satisfied. These short stories weren't even stories for me, rather they were more like an finished paragraph about a person. I never got invested in any of the characters, none of them are really memorable at all and I'm not really clear on how the earthquake really affected any of their lives.
Although I kind of liked the moments of human banality it just didn't translate into anything interesting for me. As short as the stories were it wouldn't have bothered me if I never finished any of them, as nothing really happened in the 'end' anyway, I think the reason I didn't click with the characters or the themes is because the actual 'story structure' failed for me and didn't leave me with the satisfaction you get from 'reading a story'.

The writing was extremely simple, the structure and words could have been written by a kid under 12. That being said the writing made the stories really easy to read and allowed the people to be the focus.
However, the Super-Frog story? What was the point of that one? ( )
  spiritedstardust | Dec 29, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 96 (next | show all)
I loved this book before last week’s earthquake, because it illuminated a few things about my own condition at the time that I read it. But now the truth in this collection of fiction has a new depth to it; its general conclusions have become amazingly relevant and important to us this week. It offers no solutions and I don’t even think it offers much comfort, but it holds a hauntingly accurate mirror to our world now.
 

» Add other authors (8 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Haruki Murakamiprimary authorall editionscalculated
Degas, RupertNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Gallagher, TeresaNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Porta, LourdesTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Rubin, JayTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sims, AdamNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
“Liza! What was it yesterday, then?â€
“It was what it was.â€
“That’s impossible! That’s cruel!â€

   â€”Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons
RADIO: …garrison already decimated by the Vietcong, who lost 115 of their men…
WOMAN: It’s awful, isn’t it, it’s so anonymous.
MAN: What is?
WOMAN: They say 115 guerillas, yet it doesn’t mean anything, because we don’t know anything about these men, who they are, whether they love a woman, or have children, if they prefer the cinema to the theatre. We know nothing. They just say…115 dead.

   â€”Jean-Luc Godard, Pierrot le Fou
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Five straight days she spend in front of the television, staring at crumbled banks and hospitals, whole blocks of stores in flames, severed rail lines and expressways.
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Please do not combine this entry with the entries for the individual short stories.
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Wikipedia in English (1)

Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. Short Stories. HTML:Set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, the mesmerizing stories in After the Quake are as haunting as dreams and as potent as oracles.

An electronics salesman who has been deserted by his wife agrees to deliver an enigmatic packageâ?? and is rewarded with a glimpse of his true nature. A man who views himself as the son of God pursues a stranger who may be his human father. A mild-mannered collection agent receives a visit from a giant talking frog who enlists his help in saving Tokyo from destruction. The six stories in this collection come from the deep and mysterious place where the human meets the inhumanâ??and are further proof that Murakami is one of the most visionary writers at work

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Book description
The economy was booming. People had more money than they knew what to do with. And then the earthquake struck. For the characters in After the Quake, the Kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago. Satsuki has spent thirty years hating one man: a lover who destroyed her chances of having children. Did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? Junpei's estranged parents live in Kobe. Should he contact them? Miyake left his family in Kobe to make midnight bonfires on a beach hundreds of miles away. Fourteen-year-old Sala has nightmares that the Earthquake Man is trying to stuff her inside a little box. Katagiri returns home to find a giant frog in his apartment on a mission to save Tokyo from a massive burrowing worm. 'When he gets angry, he causes earthquakes,' says Frog. 'And right now he is very, very angry.' This new collection of stories, from one of the world's greatest living writers, dissects the violence beneath the surface of modern Japan.
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