After Dark

By (author) Murakami, Haruki
Short description/annotation
Mari sips her coffee and reads a book, but soon her solitude is disturbed: a girl has been beaten up at the Alphaville hotel, and needs Mari''s help.

Meanwhile Mari''s beautiful sister Eri lies in a deep, heavy sleep that is ''too perfect, too pure'' to be normal;
Description

Reality bends all the more acutely with lack of sleep in this stunning novel from the master of the surreal.

Eyes mark the shape of the city

The midnight hour approaches in an almost-empty diner. Mari sips her coffee and reads a book, but soon her solitude is disturbed: a girl has been beaten up at the Alphaville hotel, and needs Mari''s help.

Meanwhile Mari''s beautiful sister Eri lies in a deep, heavy sleep that is ''too perfect, too pure'' to be normal; it has lasted for two months. But tonight as the digital clock displays 00:00, a hint of life flickers across the television screen in her room, even though it''s plug has been pulled out.

Strange nocturnal happenings, or a trick of the night?

''A captivating mood piece, delicate and wistful'' Evening Standard

Review quote
Stylish and enigmatic
Review quote
The novel could be an allegory of sleep, a phenomenology of time, or a cinematic metafiction. Whatever it is, its memory lingers
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The narrative carries considerable literary weight with a rare grace
Review quote
A captivating mood piece, delicate and wistful
Biographical note

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers’ award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, which turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were translated into many languages, including English, and the door was thrown wide open to Murakami’s unique and addictive fictional universe.

Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of imaginative inquiry. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84 and Men Without Women, his distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring Murakami’s place as one of the world’s most acclaimed and well-loved writers.

Promotional headline
Reality bends all the more acutely with lack of sleep in this stunning novel from the master of the surreal.