世界の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド 下巻

世界の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド #2

by Haruki Murakami, 村上春樹

〈私〉の意識の核に思考回路を組み込んだ老博士と再会した〈私〉は、回路の秘密を聞いて愕然とする。私の知らない内に世界は始まり、知らない内に終わろうとしているのだ。残された時間はわずか。〈私〉の行く先は永遠の生か、それとも死か? そして又、〔世界の終り〕の街から〈僕〉は脱出できるのか? 同時進行する二つの物語を結ぶ、意外な結末。村上春樹のメッセージが、君に届くか!?

Genres: Japanese Literature

410 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 1985

About the author

Haruki Murakami (村上春樹) is a Japanese writer. His novels, essays, and short stories have been best-sellers in Japan and internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and having sold millions of copies outside Japan. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Gunzo Prize for New Writers, the World Fantasy Award, the Tanizaki Prize, Yomiuri Prize for Literature, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Noma Literary Prize, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Kiriyama Prize for Fiction, the Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize, and the Princess of Asturias Awards.
Growing up in Ashiya, near Kobe before moving to Tokyo to attend Waseda University, he published his first novel Hear the Wind Sing (1979) after working as the owner of a small jazz bar for seven years. His notable works include the novels Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994–95), Kafka on the Shore (2002) and 1Q84 (2009–10); the last was ranked as the best work of Japan's Heisei era (1989–2019) by the national newspaper Asahi Shimbun's survey of literary experts. His work spans genres including science fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction, and has become known for his use of magical realist elements. His official website cites Raymond Chandler, Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan as key inspirations to his work, while Murakami himself has named Kazuo Ishiguro, Cormac McCarthy and Dag Solstad as his favourite currently active writers. Murakami has also published five short story collections, including First Person Singular (2020), and non-fiction works including Underground (1997), an oral history of the Tokyo subway sarin attack, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007), a memoir about his experience as a long distance runner.
His fiction has polarized literary critics and the reading public. He has sometimes been criticised by Japan's literary establishment as un-Japanese, leading to Murakami's recalling that he was a "black sheep in the Japanese literary world". Meanwhile, Murakami has been described by Gary Fisketjon, the editor of Murakami's collection The Elephant Vanishes (1993), as a "truly extraordinary writer", while Steven Poole of The Guardian praised Murakami as "among the world's greatest living novelists" for his oeuvre.

Reviews

[Yu Nishijima · Rating 5 out of 5]

最後の部分感動した。主人公はずっとこの世界から消えてしまいたい、生きていても価値がないと思っていたけど、いざ明日死ぬとなると急に死にたくなくなる。それは自分のどこかで人生に満足していた部分があるからではないか。自分を過小評価しすぎていたのではないか。なんか人間の根源にある生きる力を暗に示唆しているようにも思えた。

[Kathleen Biglary · Rating 4 out of 5]

この作品は私にとって村上春樹の作品の中でかなり上位だと思います。描写された世界がカラフルで、本を閉じても頭はまだ物語の中に残っている気がします。いかにも村上春樹らしい、微妙な設定が多かったです。しかしなぜか主人公と強く共感ができて、彼の考えや行動から人間性についていろいろ考えさせられました。

本を楽しく堪能した時間でした。

[Taka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost lost me in the first part of this second volume.

Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World was the first Murakami book I picked up years and years ago, in that summer after college without knowing who Murakami was, and the only reason I picked it up was that my friend was raving about him. I got hooked, and though I don't remember how I felt chapter by chapter, I do remember wanting to read more, a lot more by the same author. To be able to hook a reader who doesn't know anything about him (even Stephen King couldn't really pull it off, as his manuscript he submitted to agents under a different name got rejected)—that's magic.

And so I came back to this novel almost ten years after I'd first read it seeking some of that magic, and it didn't betray, though I have to admit I almost put down the book at the beginning of volume 2 during that interminable underground scene with the girl in a pink suit. I just didn't care to read through all that darkness and nonaction. Compared to Kafka on the Shore, I get the feeling that Murakami hasn't quite yet mastered the parallel storytelling, and there were moments especially in the "End of the World" sequence that I felt a little bored. Thankfully, that underground scene was just a trough, and after I got past it, things got a lot better and I was sorry the story had to come to an end (always a great sign if a book leaves you wanting more).

I might not recommend this book to pop anyone's Murakami cherry, but it's definitely a good read (if you can weather through that underground scene, that is).

[Sung-Gi Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

よくわからない、そうかもしれない、と私が頭の中でつぶやいていると、ウェイターがやってきて宮廷の専属接骨医が皇太子の脱臼をなおすときのような格好でうやうやしくワインの栓を抜き、グラスにそそいでくれた。