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4.0 

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

By Haruki Murakami
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 1Q84 and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle comes a relentlessly inventive novel that dives deep into the very nature of consciousness.

“Fantastical, mysterious, and funny . . . a fantasy world that might have been penned by Franz Kafka.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

Across two parallel narratives, Murakami draws readers into a mind-bending universe in which Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is a hyperkinetic novel that is at once hilariously funny and a deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.

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2201 Reviews

4.0
“Imaginative and expansive ideas but with little cohesion and connection between each of them. I enjoy Murakami's magical realism, but this read far more like high fantasy that still failed to be particularly immersive. It's a bit like listening to a bland storyteller recount their incredible dream—probably only exciting if you experience it and not much fun to hear about secondhand. "Hard-boiled wonderland" as a title gives the reader an expectation of a hard-boiled crime novel where a protagonist will uncover some dangerous syndicate, but instead we got unicorn skulls and severed shadows... sounds fun, right? Wrong. Throughly boring with very low tension and stakes. While there is an interesting question asked here about knowing our own consciousness, the story could have used a skilled editor to remove the fluff and heighten the stakes to make the reader more invested. But, given the high ratings, I think maybe I'm just the outlier. And that's okay! Also, I wish there was more Bob Dylan. tldr: With constant repetition in the writing, flat characters (one who's called "the chubby girl" in place of a name because apparently that's all we need to know), and disjointed fantastical ideas, this one was a particular disappointment.”

About Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami is a best-selling Japanese writer. His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the Jerusalem Prize, among others. Murakami's fiction is humorous and surreal, focusing on themes of alienation and loneliness. He is considered an important figure in postmodern literature. The Guardian praised Murakami as "among the world's greatest living novelists" for his works and achievements. Murakami is the author of 1Q84, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, Men Without Women and many more.

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