After Dark

De: Haruki Murakami

Narrado por: Judy Bennett

Here is a novel, set in Tokyo, of mysterious and intriguing chance encounters.

The midnight hour approaches in an almost empty all-night diner. Mari sips her coffee and glances up from a book as a young man, a musician, intrudes on her solitude. Both have missed the last train home. The musician has plans to rehearse with his jazz band all night; Mari is equally unconcerned and content to read, smoke, and drink coffee until dawn. Then they realise they've met before through Eri, Mari's beautiful sister.


The musician soon leaves with a promise to return before dawn. Shortly afterwards, Mari will be interrupted a second time by a girl from the Alphaville Hotel - a Chinese prostitute has been hurt by a client; the girl has heard Mari speaks fluent Chinese and requests her help.


Meanwhile, Eri is at home and sleeps a deep, heavy sleep that is "too perfect, too pure" to be normal. Her pulse and respiration are at the lowest required level. She has been in this soporific state for two months. And so Eri has become the classic myth: a sleeping beauty.


But tonight, as the digital clock displays 00:00, a faint electrical crackle is perceptible, a hint of life flickers across the TV screen in Eri's room, though the television's plug has been pulled.

(P)2007 Hodder & Stoughton Audiobooks©2007 Haruki Murakami

narrators voices

narrators voices for some of the characters were distracting. the story went nowhere really. cheers

Murakami - what else can you say?

Mentally paired for me with "Hard-Boiled Wonderland" as the two are published together in print, this is not Murakami's best novel (and some of his short stories are amazing) but it is quite good. The narrator is OK, British, but she tries just a little too hard in doing the voices at times, so that it gets annoying.