Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World cover art

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

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Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

By: Haruki Murakami, Alfred Birnbaum
Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Murakami's surreal, mind-bending masterpiece: a sci-fi pastiche and a Utopian fantasy novel ingeniously woven together.

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, post-modern manifesto. All this rolled into one rip-roaring novel, End of the World and Hard-boiled Wonderland 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.

'Here is abundant imagination at play.' Sunday Times

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

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

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

© Haruki Murakami 2001 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

 Fantasy Genre Fiction International Mystery & Crime Mystery Psychological Science Fiction Fiction Heartfelt

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All stars
Most relevant
I guess the point of this book is to put you in the shoes of someone that really doesn't understand what's going on. In that regard, Murakami excels.
Apart from the main POVs, the characters are weak. Murakami normally makes up for that with an interesting hook and an ethereal setting.
Although this is interesting, I couldn't get away with it.

Try Kafka on the shore instead. Murakami got the balance right on that one.

The narrators performance was excellent though.

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