After the Quake: Stories (Vintage International)

"Ushers the reader into a hallucinatory world where the real and surreal merge and overlap, where dreams and real-life nightmares are impossible to tell apart." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"His characters are so persuasive, and the storytelling so spacious. . . . Murakami's crisp, accomplished stories in After the Quake have great immediacy." --The Seattle Times

"One of the great Japanese exports." --Details

"Unexpectedly powerful. . . . Moving." --The New York Times Book Review

"Both mysterious and somehow quite familiar." -Alan Cheuse, San Francisco Chronicle

"In these stories . . . Murakami proves himself to be almost as fantastic-and as heroic-as his creations." -Elle

"Trim, beautiful, diamond sharp, and profoundly layered in . . . mystical symbolism and daily absurdities. Murakami's evocations of grace and possible redemption are startling, dangerous, and moving." -O, The Oprah Magazine

"Spare yet richly mysterious and emotionally prismatic, these unpredictable tales explore the subtle ways the earthquake affected those who live far from its epicenter yet who are nonetheless shaken to their very core. . . .Haunting." -Booklist (starred review)

"Murakami has written a series of deeply evocative stories." -Tulsa Today

"The stories here are well-crafted and lyrical . . . They are sometimes absurd, sometimes quite funny, but they all have real epiphanies and real moments of feeling." -Rocky Mountain News

A collection of stories inspired by the January 1995 Kobe earthquake and the poison gas subway attacks two months later takes place between the two disasters and follows the experiences of people who found their normal lives undone by surreal events.