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A review by hama
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
5.0
I gave this book 4.5/5 star
This was the strangest and weirdest book I had ever read. Translating this book must have been an absolute nightmare.
Trying to explain what this book talks about is a very hard task because it is so strange. Let me explain,
This book is divided into two different narratives (Hard-boiled wonderland) and
(pʅɹoʍ ǝɥʇ ɟo puǝ ǝɥꓕ).
There were two entirely separate narratives in terms of their protagonist, their world even their genres.
Hard-boiled wonderland was Sci-fiction, horror genre and occupied the odds number of the chapters, by that I mean it started with odd pages.
It tells the story of a nameless protagonist who’s a 35 years old man and his job was something called “Calcutech”. And Calcutech job was to process and encrypt data by their bodies and their consciousness. But they also had nemesis they were called “Semiotech”. They are Calcutecs but evil and they try to steal encrypted data. So there’s a kind of war going between them. Calcutechs kind of works for the government and then Semiotechs is kind of like an underground crime organization. When the novel begins our protagonist meets a scientist who has hired him to do data encryption and this scientist is obsessed with sounds and mammal skulls. But to get to the scientist in the very beginning he has to travel through a cavern full of waterfalls. And with this strange portal of a cavern that he goes through are these strange creatures called “Inkling” aka the Japanese “Kappa” demons.
The end of the world was a fantasy, anti-horror genre and occupied the even-numbered chapters.
And that tells a story, again a nameless protagonist, who has wound up in a town called “End of the world” whatever that means. It is a kinda medieval town surrounded by an enormous impenetrable wall. And this man has ended up in this town and he is given a job as a “Dreamreader”. Where he has to sit and read old dreams from the skulls of dead unicorns. His shadow was taken from him when he arrived in the town and the shadow has a personality of its own. And our protagonist throughout this story goes to meet up with his shadow and he wishes to be reunited with it.
Both those narratives had no proper nouns for any of their characters. Every character in this novel is just given a title like “The scientist”, “The librarian” and “The gatekeeper”.
Even though all these looked complicated and so confusing to comprehend, that is not a problem. Murakami novels are almost always kafkaesque and surreal in some way but they make their kind of sense. They all have dream logic attached to them. And I really loved it.
This was the strangest and weirdest book I had ever read. Translating this book must have been an absolute nightmare.
Trying to explain what this book talks about is a very hard task because it is so strange. Let me explain,
This book is divided into two different narratives (Hard-boiled wonderland) and
(pʅɹoʍ ǝɥʇ ɟo puǝ ǝɥꓕ).
There were two entirely separate narratives in terms of their protagonist, their world even their genres.
Hard-boiled wonderland was Sci-fiction, horror genre and occupied the odds number of the chapters, by that I mean it started with odd pages.
It tells the story of a nameless protagonist who’s a 35 years old man and his job was something called “Calcutech”. And Calcutech job was to process and encrypt data by their bodies and their consciousness. But they also had nemesis they were called “Semiotech”. They are Calcutecs but evil and they try to steal encrypted data. So there’s a kind of war going between them. Calcutechs kind of works for the government and then Semiotechs is kind of like an underground crime organization. When the novel begins our protagonist meets a scientist who has hired him to do data encryption and this scientist is obsessed with sounds and mammal skulls. But to get to the scientist in the very beginning he has to travel through a cavern full of waterfalls. And with this strange portal of a cavern that he goes through are these strange creatures called “Inkling” aka the Japanese “Kappa” demons.
The end of the world was a fantasy, anti-horror genre and occupied the even-numbered chapters.
And that tells a story, again a nameless protagonist, who has wound up in a town called “End of the world” whatever that means. It is a kinda medieval town surrounded by an enormous impenetrable wall. And this man has ended up in this town and he is given a job as a “Dreamreader”. Where he has to sit and read old dreams from the skulls of dead unicorns. His shadow was taken from him when he arrived in the town and the shadow has a personality of its own. And our protagonist throughout this story goes to meet up with his shadow and he wishes to be reunited with it.
Both those narratives had no proper nouns for any of their characters. Every character in this novel is just given a title like “The scientist”, “The librarian” and “The gatekeeper”.
Even though all these looked complicated and so confusing to comprehend, that is not a problem. Murakami novels are almost always kafkaesque and surreal in some way but they make their kind of sense. They all have dream logic attached to them. And I really loved it.