After The Quake

All the stories are so beautiful written around main theme of the book 'Earthquake' . Life goes on even as mother nature gets angry sometimes.Murakami does magic with words. Even the superficial characters in his stories are so humanized that you don't even realise the difference.Beautiful stories..ma must read if you are a Murakami fan

Sometimes Murakami tends to finish one in-a-huff, thereby leaving it a bit undercooked. These short-story collections - which are very good by-and-large - feel like have been ended with the writer working on a tight timeline, which is a recipe for not quite there. Still, you can give it a go; it’s still very good.

For full review please visit my blog https://booksteaandmorecom.wordpress.com/2016/12/07/book-review-after-the-quake/#more-305This book is a collection of six short stories. All stories are dated post the devastating Kobe earthquake of 1995 in Japan.None of the protagonists in any of the stories suffer from any loss in this earthquake. Yet this disaster jostles their life like the aftershocks of the earthquake. The first story is UFO in Kushiro. It follows the story of Komura who like most of Murakami’s male protagonist leads a mundane listless life. His wife is glued to the television for days watching news about the Kobe earthquake. This affects her to the degree that she divorces Komura as she feels that he is empty as a person. Still, Komura does not seem much affected and travels to Hokkaido. It is there he realises the void that is present in him.The second story is Landscape with Flatrion. This follows the story of Junko and Miyake. Miyake is passionate about bonfires and is scared of the refrigerator. He dreams that the refrigerator will engulf him and he will die a slow suffocating death. Junko sees a deep calm and peace in the bonfire and as the fire dwindles she realises that she is empty as a person. This greatly perturbs her and they both feel that they could die together.All God’s children can dance follows the story of Yoshiya. He had a single mother who posts her dark teenage years becomes a staunch believer of God. She tells Yoshiya that he is the son of God. His mother had told him of a doctor whose ear lobes were bitten off by a dog. He believes this person is his father and on encountering such a person one day he starts following him. At last, he has a vision where he again resorts to God.The fourth story is Thailand. This follows the story of Satsuki, who has separated from her husband. Her husband resides in Kobe and Satsuki wishes that he should have died in the earthquake. Her chauffeur Nimit takes her to an old lady, healer of souls who tells her that she has a stone inside her. This stone will kill her and she has to let the snake who will come in her dream engulf this stone.Super frog saves Tokyo is the story where a giant six-foot frog visits Katagiri and informs him that a big earthquake is going to take place in Tokyo. The frog needs the help of Katagiri to stop this earthquake and they need to fight with the worm. Here too Katagiri is a simple decent guy who neither gets appreciation and is alone.The last story is Honey pie. This is the classic story of unrequited love. It follows the story of three friends Junpei, Sayoko and Takatsuki. Junpei loves Sayoko but is unable to express it, in the meanwhile Takatsuki who is more aggressive proposes Sayoko. Junpei is devastated but he masks his feeling. Takatuski and Sayoko get married and have a daughter named Sala. Junpei is still close to them. Opportunity to express his love again comes for Junpei as Sayoko and Takatsuki separate ways but Junpei still is not able to express his feelings. The earthquake jostles him and gives him the courage to pursue his love.If anyone wants to get introduced to the books of Murakami I feel that this book will be a great start to it. It has all the elements that Murakami largely uses. The characters are similar to the ones that he uses across his novels. This is a great book and like most books of Murakami it is one which demands your unwavering attention to realize the true pearls of beauty in it.

A collection of stories which are strangely different and more subtle than the ones found in the collection of stories found in other collections of Murakami's stories.The price is unreasonably high though.

Some pages are missing . Even the quality of paper is somehow bad or worst I can say . Otherwise it is still okay to read .

"What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, me inside me."After the Quake is non-fiction with six short stories weaving around an incident which is the earthquake that took place in Kobe, Japan.Earthquake is a metaphor used in the book. It is an event from the past that the people in the tales laid to rest long ago, and that resulted in the earthquake in their lives.These are anecdotes from very everyday people like a woman named Satsuki spent 30 years of her life hating her husband. Miyake left his family to pursue what he loved doing, making bonfires. Katagiri, who one day returns home and discovers a giant frog in his apartment. Then there was a story 'Honey-pie' which I loved the most.It is quick to read but Murakami's books take long because if you are unable to bring the meaning hidden behind, you are glued to the story unless you uncover it (I personally can't go on with the next story)Being very true, I will be re-reading the book because I am yet to decrypt so much. But if you're Murakami fan you can't miss this book because so many things inside will make you feel related to the characters and the way they feel and think.

The delivery was pretty fast. That's good. But, the quality of book, I mean the cover page and pages inside..it was very dirty..it was not like a new book..it looked very old.

Absolut.ely a great story. Perfect

Probably the best collection of stories I have ever read. A couple I have read before and I really don’t understand how the same stories keep reappearing! However when they are so thought/provoking a re-reading really helps. Thank you Haruki, your talent has really enriched my life.

Small booklet but up to expectations! Murakami never fails

I must confess that I hadn't bought and read this book because I thought it was a chronicle; so, great was my surprise when I found a collection of short stories as marvellously written and mind-blowing as all Murakami's works have proved to be. Of course, the leif motif that gives rise to it is the 1995 Kobe earthquake that left open wounds in the Japanese imagery for the decades to come. In spite of this common characteristic, the stories presented range from the most disparate possible sources: a recently separated man, a young woman who doesn't know what to do with life, a delusional man who can't tell whether he contributed to save Tokyo from another earthquake (just to mention some). A continuum of uncertainty between what is thought to be real and what is thought to be a dream, after the quake is a magnificent to choice to puzzle oneself while reading it.

Mi third Murakami read, once again, inside this surreal universe of familar places in Tokio, and Japan the reader would prabably never visit and yet get to know so well...