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Underground

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099461098

  • Length: 320  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 19mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 223g

  • RRP: £10.99

Underground

Murakami tells the true story behind an act of terrorism that turned an average Monday morning into a national disaster.

In spite of the perpetrators' intentions, the Tokyo gas attack left only twelve people dead, but thousands were injured and many suffered serious after-effects. Murakami interviews the victims to try and establish precisely what happened on the subway that day.

He also interviews members and ex-members of the doomsdays cult responsible, in the hope that they might be able to explain the reason for the attack and how it was that their guru instilled such devotion in his followers.

'Not just an impressive essay in witness literature, but also a unique sounding of the quotidian Japanese mind' Independent

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099461098

  • Length: 320  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 19mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 223g

  • RRP: £10.99

Reviews

  • Murakami shares with Alfred Hitchcock a fascination for ordinary people being suddenly plucked by extraordinary circumstances from their daily lives

    Sunday Telegraph

  • Not just an impressive essay in witness literature, but also a unique sounding of the quotidian Japanese mind

    Independent

  • A scrupulous and unhistrionic look into the heart of the horror

    Scotsman

  • The testimonies he assembles are striking. From the very beginning Underground is impossibly moving and unexpectedly engrossing

    Time Out

  • There is no artifice or pretension in Underground. There is no need for cleverness. What Murakami describes happens to ordinary people in a frighteningly ordinary way. And it is all the more bizarre for that

    Observer

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About the Author

Haruki Murakami

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Men Without Women, Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.

Haruki Murakami

Read more

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Recommendations

Book your holiday: Tokyo

Tokyo has inspired all manner of writers, from home and abroad, seeking to evoke its unique atmosphere over the years.
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Competitions

Win a VINTAGE Japanese book bundle
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Extracts

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

Read an extract from the epic new novel by the internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of 1Q84, Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore.

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