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After Dark  By  cover art

After Dark

By: Haruki Murakami
Narrated by: Janet Song
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Publisher's summary

Here is a short, sleek novel of encounters, set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami's masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore.

At its center are two sisters: Eri, a fashion model slumbering her way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny's toward people whose lives are radically different from her own: a jazz trombonist who claims they've met before, a burly female "love hotel" manager and her maid staff, and a Chinese prostitute savagely brutalized by a businessman.

After Dark moves from mesmerizing drama to metaphysical speculation, interweaving time and space, as well as memory and perspective, into a seamless exploration of human agency. Murakami's trademark humor, psychological insight, and grasp of spirit and morality are here distilled with extraordinary, harmonious mastery.

©2004 Haruki Murakami. 2007 translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin (P)2007 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Darkly entertaining" (Publishers Weekly)
"A seductive and gratifying intellectual and romantic adventure." (Kirkus Reviews)
"Disarmingly intimate, almost tactile...The narrative flows like a jazz ballad [in which] each character is unique in his or her loneliness, yet each possesses a capacity for momentary empathy that is both sweet and heartbreaking. Murakami's genius, on both large and small canvases, is to create worlds both utterly alien and disconcertingly familiar." (Booklist)

What listeners say about After Dark

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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    245
  • 4 Stars
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  • 3 Stars
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    27
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Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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  • 4 Stars
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Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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    196
  • 4 Stars
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  • 3 Stars
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  • 2 Stars
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  • 1 Stars
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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Six hour short story

I love Murakami, but this book is larceny. It is 6 hours describing nothing. In fact, the book takes place in a 6 hour period. Dull characters, loose ends, DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Intriguing book, Poor Narration

I found After Dark to be fascinating with a huge amount of detailed subtextual issues. The descriptions were detailed and there's also a mystery too of sorts (though we're let in on some of the details. Very psychological. And Murakami leaves the reader to work out for themselves some of the more pivotal things like Mari's not being able to sleep and Eri Asai only sleeping. And whether or not you think the mystery is resolved.

However the narrator sounds like a computer in Star Trek. While I was able to get past it to hear the book, and while her Japanese is excellent and I learned a lot about pronunciation of the names ("r" is like a soft "d"), her affect in English is very flat. Listen to the sample first to see if you can get past it.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Witching Hours

This short Murakami novel, which emphasizes eerie atmosphere over plot and character, isn't as engaging as, say, Kafka on the Shore. Sleep is a major theme here, and I did find myself dozing off at times. Still, there are some evocative scenes, and the narration fits the mood. Murakami fans won't want to skip this, but those new to the Japanese postmodernist may want to start elsewhere.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Very enjoyable, but loose ends

I'm a Haruki fan, enjoyed this because of the usual juxtaposition of the ordinary and the surreal, the wonderful use of language. BUT just when I felt that I was getting to know and love the characters, the book ended. It needs a sequel.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

...So what?

I loved Kafka by the Shore, but am stumped by this story. I liked the protagonist, and really, most of the characters, but the plot leaves too many points open and neither redeems nor damns the characters in the end. Murakami has us watch from the outside in like were behind a camera lens, which left me cold and distant to the whole story. Everyone, male and female, are objectified in this world. Narration was great, however.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Can't Doodle

Usually when I read anything by Haruki Murakami, I am instantly hook, but with "After Dark", I either wasn't paying attention to the story or I was doing something else. The base line of the story was weak. As I mentioned in my other reviews of other short stories from this author, his short stories just lacks. There were a few highlights in After Dark, but not memorable.

Stay away from Haruki Murakami shorts. Almost all of them has been a disappointment. He is an awesome novelist, but not a good comic artist. He can't seem to doodle on a napkin, but can paint a masterpiece on canvas.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

I Hate the Chicken Salad Guy

Sometimes, just one thing, and one thing only, can ruin an entire novel for you. I was intrigued, and it wasn't the most accessible novel I've read, but I was getting into it. What killed it all for me was that pretentious bastard we first met in the Denny's, who rambled about how Chicken Salad is the only thing worth getting there. Every line of his dialogue ran nails down the chalkboard of my soul. The paranormal elements were engaging, the lead gal and her sister and the Love Hotel manager all kept my interest, but I couldn't STAND that pompous little hand-and-a-half. It was like being trapped in an elevator with the most obnoxious undergrad in the entire creative writing program at a liberal arts program. Maybe if he'd been a smaller character I could finish this book, but as it is the only thing I really wanted was to take a needle and fishing line to stitch his self-important piehole shut.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Slow and well crafted

Haruki Murakami definitely has a unique voice and way with words that forces you to think about what you're reading. He is also extremely skilled in painting a vivid image and forcing the reader to live in and observe it.

That being said, this is the kind of book that can't be interrupted or listened to halfheartedly. I only gave it four stars for now because I need to go back again and ingest this book more mindfully. I think I missed the arching metaphor that highlights what the book is /really/ about because there were times when I couldn't be as invested in it as I would've liked to be. After that, I'll most likely adjust my rating.

The narration is smooth and effective. I found Janet Song's voice to be compatible with Haruki Murakami's writing.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Good read

I love Murikami anyway and was in the mood for one of his quirky stories and this satisfied perfectly. I love how his mystical elements are never explained but make sense in terms of the story. The reader was great! Listened straight through in just a couple of days.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A story-seen-through-a-movie-camera kinda approach

Because I liked "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and "Kafka on the Shore" so much, it's hard for me to get satisfied as much with his other stories available as audiobooks so far. And I am running out of Murakami's audiobooks. But I do appreciate that Murakami experiments with a different approach every time. In this story, you feel like you are walking with a movie camera to observe a sequence of scenes and characters during one evening (until morning). Because of this format, I wasn't upset that story did not resolve. Nice. Not great, but nice.

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1 person found this helpful