Jun 06 2008
The Zen of Darkness
Haruki Murakami‘s After Dark is definitely one of the most curious novels I’ve read in a long time. His way of writing is effortless, and his topics could not be more appealing to the reader. He sums up the essence of many of his own previous works, revealing what it means to feel true affection, to fear loneliness and to be lost in a technologicaly overdeveloped world- the perfect representation of modern Tokyo.
Often the plots of his novels do not come to an obvious or logical conclusion. In Murakami’s world, logic is a very elusive thing. Everything has many layers of meaning, and he does not clearly reveal things to the reader, giving us the chance to explore. Even the characters themselves, no matter how hard they try to convince us that they are just ordinary people, are full of oddness and secrets.
Every person who appears on stage in the blazing, neon darkness of Tokyo is, first of all, looking for his or her own identity. But those people do that in strikingly different ways. Some of those ways can be quite ordinary, like reading a book at Denny’s, and some of them being suddenly violent. One thing I can say for sure without spoiling the pleasure of reading After Dark, is that it is full of pure Zen. Explore the darkness, and all answers will come unexpectedly.
Read more: Book Reviews, Fiction, Japan, NewsNastia was born in Russia, and probably that's the reason why she is so inexplicably attracted to the coldest parts of the world, such as Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Alaska and Canada. The more it snows out there - the better. Although would she be even thinking about all that cold if she hadn't first enjoyed Turkey, Bulgaria and Ukraine?
