After the Quake

This is a book by Murakami. Reading him after a break, I am still drawn by his surrealistic fiction. This time, he uses the Kobe earthquake to tie a few stories around, but the depth in them is surprising. Drawing someone into a long book is relatively easy with description, but doing it in a short story is not so simple. And Murakami seems to do both (long and short) with equal ease.

The contrasts between the hidden and the apparent, both in stuff that he is writing about and that which is within us humans, is both well-crafted and thought-provoking, in a way that common fiction cannot touch. An unusual blend (masala), I must say...for instance, the story of a guy who just constructs fires out of driftwood that arrives on a beach, is almost magical, in that it creates so much out of thin air (and some driftwood). His takeoff on the phrase 'down-to-earth' as meaning standing steady, when actually the earth itself is rumbling deep down, ready to erupt anytime, is equally insightful.
A good read.