After ​the Quake

Haruki Murakami - Sputnik ​Sweetheart
"How ​does Murakami manage to make poetry while writing of contemporary life and emotions? I am weak-kneed with admiration." Independent on Sunday "Murakami has been compared to everyone from Raymond Carver to Raymond Chandler - which should tell you only one thing: he's unique." Independent "Sputnik Sweetheart has touched me deeper and pushed me further than anything I've read in a long time." Guardian forrás: libri.hu

Haruki Murakami - Norwegian ​Wood
When ​he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.

Haruki Murakami - Blind ​Willow, Sleeping Woman
A ​young man accompanies his cousin to the hospital to check an unusual hearing complaint and recalls a story of a woman put to sleep by tiny flies crawling inside her ear; a mirror appears out of nowhere and a nightwatchman is unnerved as his reflection tries to take control of him; a couple's relationship is unbalanced after dining exclusively on exquisite crab while on holiday; a man follows instructions on the back of a postcard to apply for a job, but an unknown password stands between him and his mysterious employer. In each one of these stories Murakami sidesteps the real and sprints for the surreal. Everyday events are transcended, leaving the reader dazzled by this master of his craft.

Haruki Murakami - Underground
On ​Monday 20 March 1995 the Japanese Aum cult released a deadly cloud of Sarin nerve gas into the Tokyo underground. 12 people were killed and an estimated 3,800 suffered serious after-effects. Haruki Murakami, one of Japan's leading novelists (considered by many to be one of the most important writers now writing), was both shocked and fascinated by the awful event. Murakami's response was to interview as many of those affected as he could (only 60 victims were willing to be questioned), interested as he was in the stories created by this one awful event on so many lives. He also interviewed a number of members of the Aum cult: "I'm sure each member of the Science and Technology elite had his own personal reasons for renouncing the world and joining Aum. What they all had in common, though, was a desire to put the technical skill and knowledge they'd acquired in the service of a more meaningful goal ... that might very well be me. It might be you". The result is Underground his first work of non-fiction. Murakami writes complex, sometimes overbearing and dense novels but he here makes very little intervention into his text, simply presenting a background sketch of each before allowing the victims and cult-members to speak freely for themselves through the transcripts. They present an intricate, rounded and cinematic view of day that none of us should ever forget.

Haruki Murakami - Kafka ​on the Shore
Kafka ​on the Shore follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters. Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, 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. Their parallel odysseys are enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerising dramas. Cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky; a ghostlike pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night; a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since WWII. There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle. Murakami's new novel is at once a classic tale of quest, but it is also a bold exploration of mythic and contemporary taboos, of patricide, of mother-love, of sister-love. Above all it is an entertainment of a very high order.

Haruki Murakami - A ​Wild Sheep Chase
Wild ​Sheep Chase is one of Murakami's most fantastical novels. An advertising executive, infatuated with a girl who possesses the most perfect ears, is sent on a search for the sheep with a star on its back. This catapults him into a weird adventure to find the sheep in the wilds of Hokkaido, Japan's northern island. There are strange stories, strange encounters. A Wild Sheep Chase is an early Murakami work, but its remarkable and individual voice makes it one of the most compelling — and funny — of his books. Superbly read by Rupert Degas with an edge of Raymond Chandler.

Murakami Haruki - 1Q84
1984 ​már nem létezik. 1Q84 van. Kicserélődött a levegő, kicserélődött a táj – két hold ragyog az égbolton. Mindenkinek be kell illeszkednie az új világ rendjébe. Mint amikor új vad kerül be a vadonba, és megváltozott szabályok között kell életben maradnia. Murakami legújabb, minden korábbinál grandiózusabb – zenei és matematikai összefüggésekre komponált – trilógiája a világ teljességét igyekszik megragadni, eltörölve a valóság és a misztikum eddig ismert határait. A földi világ és az életek bonyolult hálózata az olvasót sem hagyja érintetlenül, menthetetlenül a könyv légies szövedékű gubójába kerül, egyre azt várva: mikor és miként születhet újjá – a másik világra…

Haruki Murakami - Birthday ​Stories
'The ​perfect year-round present' Time Out 'Brilliant...Murakami introduces all these stories with grace and lightness of touch, warm and informal in suggesting their essences and qualities without self-indulgence or writerly obsequiousness' Sunday Herald What will you get for your birthday this year? A chance to see into the future? Or a reminder of an imperfect past? In this enviable gathering, Haruki Murakami has chosen for his party some of the very best short story writers of recent years, each with their own birthday experiences, each story a snapshot of life on a single day. Including stories by Russell Banks, Ethan Canin, Raymond Carver, David Foster Wallace, Denis Johnson, Claire Keegan, Andrea Lee, Daniel Lyons, Lewis Robinson (included for the first time in this edition), Lynda Sexson, Paul Theroux, William Trevor and Haruki Murakami, this anthology captures a range of emotions evoked by advancing age and the passing of time, from events fondly recalled to the impact of appalling tragedy. Previously published in a Japanese translation by Haruki Murakami, this English edition contains a specially written introduction. 'A genuine curiosity of an anthology...Charming...Tantalising' Scotland on Sunday

Haruki Murakami - The ​Wind-up Bird Chronicle
'Murakami ​writes of contemporary Japan, urban alienation and journey's of self-discovery, and in this book he combines recollections of the war with metaphysics, dreams and hallucinations into a powerful and impressionistic work', Independent .'Murakami weaves these textured layers of reality into a shot-silk garment of deceptive beauty', Independent on Sunday .'Critics have variously likened him to Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C. Clarke, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Pynchon - a roster so ill assorted as to suggest Murakami is in fact an original', New York Times .'Deeply philosophical and teasingly perplexing, it is impossible to put down', Daily Telegraph .'How does Murakami manage to make poetry while writing of contemporary life and emotions? I am weak-kneed with admiration', Independent on Sunday

Haruki Murakami - After ​Dark
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: Eri, 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.

Haruki Murakami - What ​I Talk About When I Talk About Running
From ​the best-selling author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and After Dark, a rich and revelatory memoir about writing and running, and the integral impact both have made on his life. In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Haruki Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he’d completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, not to mention triathlons and a slew of critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and–even more important–on his writing. Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and includes settings ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvellous lens of sport emerges a cornucopia of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs, and the experience, after the age of fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in distance running.

Neil Gaiman - Smoke ​and Mirrors
The ​distinctive storytelling genius of Neil Gaiman has been acclaimed by writers as diverse as Norman Mailer and Stephen King. Now in this new collection of stories — several of which have never before appeared in print, and more than half that have never been collected — that will dazzle the senses and haunt the imagination. Miraculous inventions and unforgettable characters inhabit these pages: an elderly widow who finds the Holy Grail in a second-hand store...a frightened little boy who bargains for his life with a troll living under a bridge by the railroad tracks...a stray cat who battles nightly against a recurring evil that threatens his unsusupecting adoptive family. In these stories, Gaiman displays the power, wit, insight and outrageous originality that has made him one of the most unique literary artists of our day.

Murakami Haruki - Birkakergető ​nagy kaland
A ​fiatal reklámszövegíró unalmas élete hirtelen megváltozik, amikor az eltűnt barátjától kapott képeslap révén belekeveredik egy mutáns birka utáni abszurd hajszába. Japán eldugott hegyvidékén aztán találkozik a mitikus állattal és önmaga démonaival is.

Cormac McCarthy - The ​Road
Cormac ​McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane

Murakami Haruki - 1Q84 ​2.
A ​világok átjárhatók, ha nem is mindenki számára. Ám a mitikus apró nép időről időre megtalálja az átjárót, amelyen átlépve beavatkozhat az emberi történelembe. Amikor azonban az egész életét a szerelmi vágyódásnak alárendelő Aomame előtt a matematikát oktató Tengo egy irodalmi mű által öntudatlanul megnyitja a kaput 1Q84-be, kiderül, hogy az emberek számára csak egyirányú a világok közötti közlekedés. A titokzatos apró nép által inspirált, szörnyű tetteket elkövető szekta vezetőjének kiiktatása, a világ kizökkent idejének helyreállítása egy egész életre szóló várakozás céljaként kap értelmet. Bár a választás nem könnyű: a világ egyensúlyának mindig nagy az ára, és az egyén érdekei nem számítanak. Murakami nagyszabású trilógiájának második könyvében az egymást tükröző fejezeteket olvasva nemcsak egy szerelem világokat megmozgató erejét követhetjük nyomon tovább, de a valóság és a valódiság kérdéseit is újra föltehetjük akár a filozófia, akár a misztika nyelvén.

Murakami Haruki - 1Q84 ​3.
Ahogy ​a párhuzamos világok is találkoznak a végtelenben, úgy az évtizedek óta egymás után vágyódó szerelmesek is folyton közelednek egymáshoz. A két hold uralta éjszakai égbolt alatt Aomame és Tengo életének szálai kettejüket is uraló misztikus kötelékké fonódik, sorsuk végérvényesen egybekapcsolódik - életet adva egy új világnak, egy új jövevénynek. A világ látszatai és a látszatok világa elkerülhetetlenül összekuszálódik, és nincs az az éles elméjű nyomozó, aki képes lenne kibogozni, nincs az a fanatikus szekta, amely eligazodna benne. A kizökkent időt helyretolni, az új világ rendjét és magukat a kárhozattól megmenteni csak a szerelmesek képesek. Hogy ez a világ a sajátjuk-e vagy azzá válik - az a holdak titkában rejlik.

Neil Gaiman - Terry Pratchett - Good ​Omens
There ​is a distinct hint of Armageddon in the air. According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (recorded, thankfully, in 1655, before she blew up her entire village and all its inhabitants, who had gathered to watch her burn), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, the Four Bikers of the Apocalypse are revving up their mighty hogs and hitting the road, and the world's last two remaining witch-finders are getting ready to fight the good fight, armed with awkwardly antiquated instructions and stick pins. Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. . . . Right. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except that a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon -- each of whom has lived among Earth's mortals for many millennia and has grown rather fond of the lifestyle -- are not particularly looking forward to the coming Rapture. If Crowley and Aziraphale are going to stop it from happening, they've got to find and kill the Antichrist (which is a shame, as he's a really nice kid). There's just one glitch: someone seems to have misplaced him. . . . First published in 1990, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's brilliantly dark and screamingly funny take on humankind's final judgment is back -- and just in time -- in a new hardcover edition (which includes an introduction by the authors, comments by each about the other, and answers to some still-burning questions about their wildly popular collaborative effort) that the devout and the damned alike will surely cherish until the end of all things.

Neil Gaiman - Fragile ​Things
Let ​me tell you a story. No, wait, one's not enough. I'll begin again... Let me tell you stories of the months of the year, of ghosts and heartbreak, of dread and desire. Of after-hours drinking and unanswered phones, of good deeds and bad days, of trusting wolves and how to talk to girls. There are stories within stories, whispered in the quiet of the night, shouted above the roar of the day, and played out between lovers and enemies, strangers and friends. But all, all are fragile things made of just 26 letters arranged and rearranged to form tales and imaginings which will dazzle your senses, haunt your imagination and move you to the very depths of your soul.

Haruki Murakami - 1Q84 ​(angol)
The ​final part of Murakami's gripping, sensational mystery story At the close of Book Two of 1Q84, Aomame and Tengo found themselves in perilous situations, threatened and confused. As 1Q84 accelerates towards its conclusion, both are pursued by persons and forces they do not know and cannot understand. As they begin to decipher more about the strange world into which they have slipped, so they sense their destinies converging. What they cannot know is whether they will find one another before they are themselves found. Inspired by George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1Q84 is a magnificent and fully-imagined work of fiction - both a thriller and a moving love-story . It is a world from which the reader emerges stunned and altered. Book Three of 1Q84 is the final volume of Murakami's magnum opus. In Japan, Books One and Two were published on the same day with Book Three following a year later. All three books were received with huge excitement and became instant bestsellers. The UK publication reflects the pattern of the original publication with Books One and Two being released in one volume and Book Three following in a separate edition.

Haruki Murakami - 1Q84 ​1-3. (angol)
A ​mesmerising, epic masterpiece from Haruki Murakami. The year is 1984. Aomame sits in a taxi on the expressway in Tokyo. Her work is not the kind which can be discussed in public but she is in a hurry to carry out an assignment and, with the traffic at a stand-still, the driver proposes a solution. She agrees, but as a result of her actions starts to feel increasingly detached from the real world. She has been on a top-secret mission, and her next job will lead her to encounter the apparently superhuman founder of a religious cult. Meanwhile, Tengo is leading a nondescript life but wishes to become a writer. He inadvertently becomes involved in a strange affair surrounding a literary prize to which a mysterious seventeen-year-old girl has submitted her remarkable first novel. It seems to be based on her own experiences and moves readers in unusual ways. Can her story really be true? Aomame and Tengo's stories influence one another, at times by accident and at times intentionally, as the two come closer and closer to intertwining. As 1Q84 accelerates towards its conclusion, both are pursued by persons and forces they do not know and cannot understand. As they begin to decipher more about the strange world into which they have slipped, so they sense their destinies converging. What they cannot know is whether they will find one another before they are themselves found. 1Q84 is a magnificent and fully-imagined work of fiction, a thriller, a love-story and a mind-bending ode to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is a world from which the reader emerges stunned and altered.