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Book of the Week

11 years ago


Hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world : a novel /
Haruki Murakami ; translated by Alfred Birnbaum.

I really enjoyed this book and especially thought that the
last half was very exciting. In fact,
after I finished the book, I picked up a couple of other titles to read but
they seemed so dry and colorless in comparison.
At first, though, I couldn’t understand what was going on in the novel
and to add to the confusion, there seemingly are two separate story lines.

From Amazon: “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.”

This book is futuristic or science fiction. None of the characters has a name and the
narrator is known by his profession, Calcutec.
He has had surgery to separate, then re-attach the two hemispheres of
his brain so that he can take data in on one side of his brain and re-format it
using his other hemisphere (recalculate it).
He saves the data on a device and inserts it into storage located behind
his left knee. He has been hired by “the
System” to do this in order to hide data and he is pursued by INKlings and
Semiotecs who want the information. But
mostly he is imperiled by the System scientist who did the brain surgery and
who is directing the Calcutec. The
scientist has acted independently and overstepped his bounds, causing tragic
results for several people and the clock is ticking toward an unimaginable
future for the Calcutec. As
noted on the cover, this book is a “winner of Japan’s prestigious Tanizaki
Prize, is an unnerving, fantastic tale of technological espionage, brain-wave tampering,
and the most lyrical sort of fear and loathing.”

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