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Comment by karaokeyoga | Hacker News Reader

I've read many of his books and short stories over the years, and would recommend "Underground", about the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway.

The English translation is, I believe, much shorter than the original Japanese, but I found its intimate descriptions of everyday Tokyo life contrasting with the terror of that morning powerful reading.

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Great! I also agree. One phrase always stuck with me, when talking about the leader of the cult, Murakami said, paraphrasing, "imagine the bloodbath of internal conflicts that must need to happen to give rise to someone like that". For some reason, I've always remembered it. "Bloodbath of internal conflicts" was a line that always stuck with me. :P ;) xx ;p

Also, I recommend getting hands on the very early (and short) English translations of, "Hear the Wind Sing", and "Pinball 1973" -- just really strange, bizarre and cool. Like a distilled pure essence of all his works to come, but these were (I think) his first two. You can sort of see all his themes, style and everything in those first two. Really great! :) ;p xx ;p

Seconding pinball 1973

I have read and remembered exactly one of Murikami's stories, and it hit me like a giant earthquake: the short story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo." I cannot recommend it enough.

There is a very recent animation movie by Pierre Földes that kind of remixes his main tropes, but with Frog as the central figure intertwined with the guy and the cat from the Wind-up Bird Chronicles: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Willow,_Sleeping_Woman.... I really enjoyed it, it’s like a mashup of his main works.

Just read the Wikipedia entry for this book and can recommend it as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(Murakami_book)

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