After Dark

A short, sleek novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami-s masterworks and At its center are two sisters-Eri, a fashion model slumbering her way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny-s A short, sleek novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami-s masterworks and At its center are two sisters-Eri, a fashion model slumbering her way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny-s toward people whose lives are radically alien to her own: a jazz trombonist who claims they-ve met before, a burly female -love hotel- manager and her maid staff, 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 Eri-s slumber-mysteriously tied to the businessman plagued by the mark of his crime-will either restore or annihilate her. 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 empathy, 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.