After the Quake

Hajime tells the story of his relationship with Shimamoto, an unconventional girl, from their first meetings as children through to life as students. They drift apart, but come together years later when Hajime is married and a father of two.

A collection of off-the-wall short stories by Japan's leading contemporary novelist. An elephant vanishes; hunger drives a couple to rob McDonalds; an insomniac wife wakes in a different world.

Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all. Marked by the same wry humor that has defined his entire body of work, in this collection Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic.

Sputnik Sweetheart is his ninth novel, written in 1999, and tells the story of a young woman - Sumire, an aspiring writer - who falls in love with an older, successful businesswoman and wine expert, Miu. Their relationship is told through the eyes of Sumire's close (male) friend. It is a curious, mysterious tale, told with the compassion and quirkiness that is the hallmark of Murakami's writing. Translated from Japanese to English by Philip Gabriel.

On his way home from school, the young narrator of The Strange Library pops into the library, wondering how taxes were collected in the Ottoman Empire. This is his first mistake. Led to a special 'reading room' under the library by a strange old man, he finds himself imprisoned. His mother will be worrying why he hasn't returned, and the old man seems to have an appetite for eating small boys' brains. How will he escape?

Toru Watanabe, approaching middle age, hears The Beatles song "Norwegian Wood" in an airplane and, with Proustian vividness, it transports him back to his student days in Japan with Naoko, Midori, and Storm Trooper.

Kafka on the Shore follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters. Kafka Tamura runs away from home at 15, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy. The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down.

Tsukuru Tazaki's life was irreparably changed when his relationships with his high school best friends became severed during Tsukuru's college days, with no explanation. Now at 35, Tsukuru's girlfriend Sara suggests he goes to talk to these high school friends in person to mend the relationships. Tsukuru visited his friends in Nagoya and Finland one by one, and uncovers the real reason as to why their relations were broken off.

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver's enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 - "Q" is for "question mark". A world that bears a question....

Hear the Wind Sing follows the fortunes of the narrator and his friend, known only by his nickname, the Rat. The narrator is home from college on his summer break. He spends his time drinking beer and smoking in J’s Bar with the Rat, listening to the radio, thinking about writing and the women he has slept with, and pursuing a relationship with a girl with nine fingers.