After the Quake

Product Information

And - where the murmur of life is discerned - sometimes, it's a question of digging with your bare hands. Die beträchtliche Spannung der Erzählungen lebt folgerichtig aus der Drohung wie aus der Verheißung der Brüche. Das Ende kann eine neue Liebe, ein gemeinsamer Selbstmord, eine erfolgreiche Gottsuche, der Aufbruch aus seelischer Erstarrung sein. Doch Murakami lässt mit seiner auffälligsten Eigenschaft als Erzähler das Ende zumeist offen: einem beobachteten Gleichmut, der von der katastrophischen Zuspitzung absticht und die Traumatisierung kompensiert, aber nicht mit einer sorgsam gepflegten narzisstischen Coolness-Attitüde verwechselt werden darf." - Ludger Lütkehaus, Die Zeit After the Quake is my first taste of Haruki Murakami. It is a collection of six stories set in the aftermath of the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Junpei tells young Sala the story of Masakichi, an anthropomorphic bear who sells honey. She says that Masakichi should sell honey pies to increase his profit and Junpei agrees. After she falls asleep, he talks with Sala's mother Sayoko in the kitchen about taking the girl to the Ueno Zoo. She agrees and tells him to also invite Sala's father Takatsuki. While Syrian frontlines have been largely frozen for years, a deepening economic crisis has exacted a heavy toll across the fractured nation, leading to fuel shortages, increased power cuts and growing deprivation.

In these stories . . . Murakami proves himself to be almost as fantastic–and as heroic–as his creations.”– Elle Nach dem Beben ist ein bewundernswert konstruiertes Buch. (...) Denn Murakamis Erzählungen beunruhigen nicht, wie es beispielsweise die von Kafka tun, auch wenn sie mitunter ganz kafkaesk beginnen (.....) Sie erschüttern nicht wie das Erdbeben, auf das sie sich beziehen, sondern umfangen den Leser leicht und sicher, so dass er sich in ihnen rasch wohl zu fühlen beginnt." - Leopold Federmair, Neue Zürcher Zeitung Sunday's game, which was due to decide who goes through to next year's Afcon finals in the Ivory Coast, is being played in Marrakesh because The Gambia's stadium was deemed unfit to host internationals.

This is the twelfth book I have read by Murakami and at this point you could probably say that I am quite invested in the author. I think he is fantastic, well, sometimes. And that’s the problem, I just don’t find him very consistent in his brilliance. My opinion of this collection only reinforces my point. That narrative action, that of the accidental turn, in this case the earthquake, that leads to new fortune, recurs in a number of these wonderfully inventive stories. (...) These stories, both mysterious and yet somehow quite familiar, may have the same effect on you, living, as we all are now, with the possibility of imminent disaster." - Alan Cheuse, San Francisco Chronicle

We reported earlier about Morocco seemingly not taking up France's offer of aid - and it appears Germany is in a similar situation. Attempts have been made to repair relations, with Germany's president Frank-Walter Steinmeier writing directly to Morocco's King Mohammed VI in January last year seeking a "new association". Dazzlingly elegant...In a world where even the ground beneath our feet can't be relied on, imagination becomes less of a luxury and more of a duty. It's an obligation that Murakami is busily making his raison d'etre, to our very great advantage Guardian Saturday's qualifier between Morocco and Liberia, which was due to take place in Agadir - some 260km (160 miles) away from the quake's epicentre - has already been called off. In “Thailand,” a woman named Satsuki goes to a professional conference in Bangkok, Thailand, and decides to vacation there for a week with the help of a limousine driver and guide named Nimit. The alternate reality theme is introduced when the limousine arrives looking like an object from another world, as if it had dropped from someone’s fantasy. When Nimit asks Satsuki if her hometown of Kyoto, which is not far from Kobe, was much damaged by the quake, she thinks of an unnamed “he” who lives in Kobe. Nimit takes Satsuki to a poor village to meet an eighty-year-old woman fortune-teller who tells Satsuki that there is a stone inside her body and that she must dream of a snake that will remove it or she will die. The old woman also tells Satsuki that the unnamed man in Kobe, obviously a man who jilted Satsuki in the past, is not dead. Satsuki now recognizes that it is she who is headed toward death. She even thinks that the earthquake may be her fault because she wished for it to kill the man. As she flies home, she wishes for sleep so her dream will come. Once again, a character is reminded of the emptiness inside the self, but once again also there is some ambiguity about the implications of this realization. If Satsuki has her dream, will she be saved from the hardness of her heart?Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. His first job was at a record store, which is where one of his main characters, Toru Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, works. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the coffeehouse 'Peter Cat' which was a jazz bar in the evening in Kokubunji, Tokyo with his wife. When Junpei, Sayoko, and her husband Takatsuki were close friends at the university, Junpei felt that Sayoko was the girl he had been looking for, but because he could never bring himself to express his feelings to her, Takatsuki was the first one to declare his love. After graduation, Junpei became a successful short-story writer, while Takatsuki got a job with a newspaper and married Sayoko. Just before Sala’s second birthday, Takatsuki and Sayoko divorce and Junpei thinks about asking Sayoko to marry him but cannot make up his mind. When Junpei and Sayoko take Sala to a zoo to see the bears, he tells the little girl a story about Tonkichi who trades salmon with Masakichi for his honey, eventually making them best friends. When the salmon disappear, Tonkichi ends up being sent to the zoo. The only story with blatant fantasy elements in the collection. A businessman arrives home to discover a giant frog in his house who informs him that he needs help defeating a giant worm who wants to cause another earthquake. The story is absurd, funny and surprisingly emotional at the end. 4/5 stars Syria’s envoy to the UN said Monday that aid sent after the earthquake will reach all its population, even though Damascus does not control all of its territory. More than 10 search and rescue teams from the European Union have been mobilised to help with the recovery, a spokesperson for the European Commission said. The US, UK, Canada, Israel, Russia and China are among other nations to have offered assistance and calls have emerged for the international community to relax some of the political restrictions on aid entering north-west Syria, the country’s last rebel-held enclave and one of the areas worst hit by the earthquake.

Avem de-a face cu 6 povestiri dintre care prima este "Un OZN aterizeaza in Kushiro". Mi s-a parut o intamplare ciudatica despre un tip numit Kamura care este parasit de sotie dupa cutremur. Nu am inteles foarte bine motivele ei si mi s-a parut un gest pueril. Probabil ca e "replica" de dupa cutremur, caci, dupa cum bine stim, nevasta trebuie sa aiba mereu o replica. It has prompted Germany's foreign ministry to comment, with a spokesperson saying: "Diplomatic relations between Germany and Morocco are good.Hadia Temli, owner of Gallery Siniya 28, held an online auction that raised €75,000 in a week. Serge Dive, CEO of experiential travel show PURE, which had to be cancelled at 24-hour’s notice, pivoted to raising funds for Education For All and Travel Link Foundation. “Crucially, we also gathered our PURE community to discuss ways in which we can support Morocco in their recovery,” he says. “The key takeaway was simple; as leaders in experiential travel, we must support the tourism industry now more than ever.”