Tab Article

Ratings: ★★★★★ (4.7/5)
Genre: Short Stories, Magical Realism, Japanese Literature

Book Review:
Haruki Murakami's ''after the quake'' is a small book that contains multitudes. It is a collection of six stories, each one a gem, all of them orbiting the gravitational pull of the 1995 Kobe earthquake. But this is not a book about the earthquake itself. It is about the way a catastrophe, even one experienced from a distance, can shake loose the hidden things in our lives—our fears, our regrets, our buried longings. Each story is a perfect entry point into Murakami's unique world. In ''UFO in Kushiro,'' a woman leaves her husband after the quake, and he travels north, encountering a woman with a mysterious story about a UFO. In ''Thailand,'' a woman on vacation finds herself drawn into a strange encounter with an old man who claims he can help her release a decades-old grudge. And in the brilliant, unforgettable ''Super-Frog Saves Tokyo,'' a man comes home to find a giant, talking frog in his apartment, who enlists his help in a battle to save the city from a subterranean worm whose rage causes earthquakes. It's classic Murakami: surreal, funny, and deeply moving. The prose is, as always, deceptively simple, drawing you into a world that feels both utterly real and dreamlike. Murakami has a genius for capturing the quiet loneliness of modern life and the strange, unexpected connections that can pierce through it. ''after the quake'' is a dazzlingly elegant collection, as the Guardian put it. It's a book about trauma and healing, about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of a chaotic world, and about the deep, inexplicable places inside us that Murakami speaks to so powerfully. A must-read for fans and a perfect introduction for newcomers.