Ekta | wisdomekta

  This is my first Murakami read of 2026. And true to his usual writing style, this book also carries his signature sense of the odd, the unexplained, and the unresolved. So, this book is a one-night saga on what happened in Tokyo after the sun had set! Nineteen-year-old Mari Asai was sitting alone in a corner of a famous café when a stranger—well, not entirely a stranger—approached her and struck up a conversation. The stranger, Takahashi Tetsuya, insists that he knows her older sister, Eri, thus setting Mari on an odyssey through the sleeping city. At first, Mari ignored him, just as she was oblivious to everyone who passed by her. But her icy reception didn’t daunt Takahashi’s adamantine resolve, and eventually Mari began answering his questions. What began as an awkward conversation between two seemingly unrelated strangers turned into a wonderful night of adventure, music, and revelations. “After Dark” is generally a light read. It delves into a person’s thoughts and emotion...

  I had no idea about this event in history until I read this. It’s insane—a chilling chronicle of violence and terror that is absolutely heartbreaking. " Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche " by Haruki Murakami is a non-fiction work that recounts the gas attacks that occurred in the Tokyo subway system on a beautiful spring day in March 1995. A religious cult known as Aum Shinrikyo, also referred to as the "Doomsday cult," released packets of sarin gas, resulting in many deaths, numerous injuries, and a nation left in shock. This book provides an insider's perspective on this tragedy through a series of interviews with survivors, relatives of the deceased, medical personnel, and members of the cult. The first part of the book is composed of chapters filled with interviews aimed at reconstructing the events of the sarin gas attack. It incorporates perspectives from victims, railway administration officials, police officers who w...

Murakami's writing style resonates with me on a personal level. His sentences, though they may appear as a lost story or sometimes half-baked, hold a deeper meaning that transcends the ordinary. His stories often mirror my own philosophical musings, creating a sense of connection. 'The Elephant Vanishes' is a collection of short stories that delve into the mundane aspects of life, paradoxically through simple and unassuming writings. This simplicity, however, is what makes these stories so intriguing and thought-provoking. My favourite stories in the book are- “ The Little Green Monster ”. The story infers about the ugly parts of our personality that we are aware of and try to avoid continuously. But, in view of Murakami, this avoidance empowers the weakness. “ The Silence” . This story talks about how misunderstandings and misperceptions mould the personality and experience of the affected person, the overwhelming intensity of feelings from the past affecting t...

  I finished this thick trilogy of 1318 pages when my life events led to a numb situation, leaving me dumb and fooled. Right now, my mindset is like the lives of the protagonists in the novel who landed in some parallel world where everything is different and yet everything is the same. The book's ending has lent me some hope that there may be a stairwell for me, too… which will escape me from the dead-end. 1Q84 refers to 1984, where the Q stands for “question mark,” i.e. A world that bears a question. This novel follows two protagonists, Tengo and Aomame. Both of them are doing something dangerous, and unknowingly, in a strange intertwining of fates, they are together drawn to a peculiar world and start living through magical realism- a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a...

Pinball, published in 1980 by Japanese author Haruki Murakami is the second book in the "Trilogy of the Rat" series. It is preceded by Hear the Wind Sing and followed by A Wild Sheep Chase and is the second novel written by Murakami. The theme continues into Pinball 1973 which takes place three years after Hear the Wind Sing . This virtually plotless book alternates between describing the life of the narrator and that of his friend, The Rat. It tells the tale around the narrator's brief but intense obsession with pinball, his life as a freelance translator, and his later efforts to reunite with the old pinball machine that he used to play with. He works from ten to four in a comfortable office and earns a generous amount of money. Despite this, the narrator seems bored and somewhat dissatisfied with his life. The Rat still doesn’t know what to do with his life. He’s mulled over it and lost sleep at night thinking about it. At the end, still uncertain about what to do but...

  “Hear the Wind Sing” is the first read for the year 2023. The novella written by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami is the first one by this famous writer. It first appeared in the June 1979 issue of Gunzo (a local magazine) and in the form of a book the next month. Having recently read Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by the author, I figured I would go rearwards and start at the beginning, try and acquaint myself with his entire body of work. This first book is an uncooked write-up with a focus on the core human sentiment. The writing has beautifully grasped human feelings vis the immediate environment. The visualization is so vivid that it is like living the novel. The novella is Magical, mystical, and magnificent but otherwise seemed messy, middling, and monotonous. One of the most impressive things absent from Hear the Wind Sing is the plot!! …and yet it is one of the best-selling novels since 1979. The book is about eighteen days in a boy’s life before he return...

   Pic as found on internet I found this author while googling about top rated writers around the world. Haruki Murakami is a Japanese author. His novels, essays, and short stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally around the world, with his work translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside Japan. I have read many novels and books of Murakami, and every time I discover his writings as fresh, raw, and oddly sealed with magic. The sunken feelings of human beings are captured phenomenally in his compositions. His books present the world which seems to be untruly true. Men Without Women is a compilation of 07 short stories. The stories penetrated through my eyes and have left deep impressions on my thoughts and heart. These small tales explore those crushing feelings of losing someone…due to death, mistake, misunderstandings, or many other reasons. It depicts the bravery of a person to lift his broken spirit and carry on forward w...