Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

by Haruki Murakami
Adam Sims

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Information is everything in Hard-boiled Wonderland. A specialist encrypter is attacked by thugs with orders from an unknown source, is chased by invisible predators, and dates an insatiably hungry librarian who never puts on weight. In the End of the World a new arrival is learning his role as dream-reader. But there is something eerily disquieting about the changeless nature of the town and its fable-like inhabitants. Told in alternate chapters, the two stories converge and combine to create a novel that is surreal, beautiful, thrilling and extraordinary.

Creators
Publisher

Naxos AudioBooks

Edition: Unabridged
Release date

June 23, 2010
Formats
- OverDrive Listen audiobook
  - ISBN: 9781843793809
  - File size: 403547 KB
  - Duration: 14:00:43
Languages
- English
Reviews
- AudioFile Magazine
  
  This novel is constructed around two parallel stories that are presented in alternating chapters. Odd-numbered chapters, which are read by Adam Sims and take place in "Hard-Boiled Wonderland," tell the realistic story of a human data processor in Tokyo whose world has turned upside down. Even-numbered chapters, narrated by Ian Porter, tell the story of a newcomer to "The End of the World," an odd town whose residents live behind a wall and surrender their shadows. Sims and Porter are well matched for the alternating chapters. Each is introspective as his character explores the meaning of the mind. While the two stories are distinct, the similarity in the pace and tone of both narrators keeps things smooth as the stories converge. J.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
- Publisher's Weekly
  
  July 26, 2010
  Murakami's two stories—which alternate, chapter by chapter—are told by two narrators, who split duties here. Ian Porter is the baritone, thoughtful and deliberative; Adam Sims is lighter spirited, flightier, and more amused by the bizarre comedy of Murakami's puzzle box. Both readers are well chosen, expertly picking their way across the minefield of this intoxicating, perplexing story. And their balancing act mimics the book's alternation of tones, styles, and stories. The recording is studded by occasional studio sound effects that are hardly necessary, but do manage to cleverly amplify the woozy, trippy disorientation of the tale. A Vintage paperback.
- Library Journal
  
  July 1, 2010
  Murakami's demanding 1991 novel, newly available on audio, features two parallel narratives reflecting on such issues as death, paranoia, information, freedom, and choice. In the first, read by Adam Sims ("After the Quake", an unnamed protagonist becomes involved with an unusually helpful reference librarian, an eccentric scientist, two dangerous thugs, and even more deadly creatures living beneath Tokyo. In the second narrative, read by actor Ian Porter, a separate protagonist finds himself in a walled town and reading the dreams of others with the aid of another librarian. The narratives are told in alternating chapters and gradually intersect. Sims masterfully conveys his hero's bewilderment at the odd circumstances of his life, while Porter is more somber in his performance, employing a different kind of tentativeness to convey his character's uneasy adjustment to a strange new world. This unique blend of noir, sf, and fable owes a considerable debt to Jorge Luis Borges. Fans of Murakami and offbeat literary fiction will find much to like here, as will, naturally, librarians.—Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr. Lib.
  Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- AudioFile Magazine
  
  This audio version of Murakami's 1991 dystopian novel is extremely welcome, even if not completely successful. Murakami is aiming for a mash-up of futurist and fantasy tales, narrated by a nameless and mostly emotionless "Calcutech" worker who has been scientifically altered (he discovers halfway through the story) so that he can perform a mysterious computerlike function called data shuffling. It appears that he is the experiment of a brilliant rogue scientist who claims to be trying to save the world with the help of his plump, pink-garbed granddaughter. The level of Murakami's invention is dazzling, but the characters, intentionally robbed of memory and passion, leave Kirby Heyborne little choice but to play them as bland and flat, even in terrifying jeopardy. You see the problem. B.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
- Publisher's Weekly
  
  March 1, 1993
  Murakami's lightning prose more than sustains the elaborate plot of this thriller, set in a Tokyo of the near future.
- Publisher's Weekly
  
  September 2, 1991
  There ought to be a name for the genre Murakami ( A Wild Sheep Chase ) has invented, and it might be the literary pyrotechno-thriller. The plot here is so elaborate that about 100 pages, one-fourth of the book, elapse before its various elements begin to fit together, but Murakami's lightning prose more than sustains the reader. Embellished with witticisms, wordplay and allusions to such figures as Stendhal heroes and Lauren Bacall, the tale is set in a Tokyo of the near future. Thanks to a wonderland of technology, an intelligence agent has had his brain implanted with a ``profoundly personal drama'' that allows him to ``launder'' and ``shuffle'' classified data, and all that he knows of the drama is its password, The End of the World. But after interference from a scientist and from the Semiotecs, a rival intelligence unit, the subconscious story is about to replace the agent's own perceptions of reality. Intertwined with the agent's attempts to understand his plight are scenes from The End of the World. Murakami's ingenuity and inventiveness cannot fail to intoxicate; this is a bravura performance.