After Dark Contributor(s): Murakami, Haruki (Author) |
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ISBN: 0307278735 ISBN-13: 9780307278739 Publisher: Vintage
WE WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD! Click here for our low price guarantee Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions Published: April 2008 Annotation: A short, sleek novel of encounters set in the witching hours of Tokyo between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami's masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. At its center are two sisters: Yuri, a fashion model sleeping her way into oblivion; and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny's into lives radically alien to her own: those of a jazz trombonist who claims they've met before; a burly female "love hotel" manager and her maidstaff; and a Chinese prostitute savagely brutalized by a businessman. These "night people" are haunted by secrets and needs that draw them together more powerfully than the differing circumstances that might keep them apart, and it soon becomes clear that Yuri's slumber-mysteriously tied to the businessman plagued by the mark of his crime - will either restore or annihilate her. After Dark moves from mesmerizing drama to metaphysical speculation, interweaving time and space as well as memory and perspective into a seamless exploration of human agency - the interplay between self-expression and understanding, between the power of observation and the scope of compassion and love. Murakami's trademark humor, psychological insight, and grasp of spirit and morality are here distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery. ""Eyes mark the shape of the city. Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature-or more, like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuoussupply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has indeed passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city's moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding."" --from After Dark "From the Hardcover edition." |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Psychological - Fiction | Magical Realism |
Dewey: FIC |
LCCN: 2007004828 |
Lexile Measure: 710(Not Available) |
Series: Vintage International |
Physical Information: 0.76" H x 5.18" W x 8.02" L (0.56 lbs) 256 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - Japanese |
Features: Illustrated, Price on Product |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: In After Dark--a gripping novel of late night encounters--Murakami's trademark humor and psychological insight are distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery. Nineteen-year-old Mari is waiting out the night in an anonymous Denny's when she meets a young man who insists he knows her older sister, thus setting her on an odyssey through the sleeping city. In the space of a single night, the lives of a diverse cast of Tokyo residents--models, prostitutes, mobsters, and musicians--collide in a world suspended between fantasy and reality. Utterly enchanting and infused with surrealism, After Dark is a thrilling account of the magical hours separating midnight from dawn. |
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