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Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, Page 40

Haruki Murakami


  Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70402-4

  SOUTH OF THE BORDER, WEST OF THE SUN

  Born into an affluent family, Hajime has arrived at middle age wanting for almost nothing. The postwar years have brought him a fine marriage, two daughters, and an enviable career. Yet a sense of inauthenticity about his success threatens his happiness. And a boyhood memory of a wise, lonely girl named Shimamoto clouds his heart.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-76739-8

  SPUTNIK SWEETHEART

  A college student, identified only as “K,” falls in love with his classmate, Sumire. But devotion to the writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments—until she meets Miu, an older and more sophisticated businesswoman. When Sumire disappears from an island off the coast of Greece, “K” is solicited to join the search party and finds himself beset by ominous, haunting visions.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-72605-7

  UNDERGROUND

  It was a clear spring day, Monday, March 20, 1995, when five members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo conducted chemical warfare on the Tokyo subway system using sarin, a poison gas twenty-six times as deadly as cyanide. The unthinkable had happened, a major urban transit system had become the target of a terrorist attack. In an attemp to discover why, Murakami talked to the people who lived through the catastrophe—from a Subway Authority employee with survivor guilt, to a fashion salesman with more venom for the media than for the perpetrators, to a young cult member who vehemently condemns the attack though he has not quit Aum. Through these and many other voices, Murakami exposes intriguing aspects of the Japanese psyche.

  Fiction/978-0-375-72580-7

  WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING

  While training for the New York City Marathon, Haruki Murakami decided to keep a journal of his progress. The result is a beautiful memoir about his intertwined obsessions with running and writing, full of vivid memories and insights, including the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the expanding population who find similar satisfaction in athletic pursuit.

  Memoir/Running/978-0-307-38983-1

  A WILD SHEEP CHASE

  A twenty-something advertising executive receives a postcard and appropriates its image for an insurance company’s advertisement. What he doesn’t realize is that included in the pastoral scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man in black who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-71894-6

  THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE

  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II. In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-77543-0

  VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL

  Available at your local bookstore, or visit

  www.randomhouse.com

  FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, APRIL 2001

  English translation copyright © 2000 by Haruki Murakami

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by

  Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Part One first published by Kodansha Ltd. as Andaguraundo in 1997; Part Two first published by Bungeishunjusha as Yakusoku sareta basho de in 1998. Copyright © 1997, 1998 by Haruki Murukami. This translation first published in hardcover in Great Britain by The Harvill Press, London, in 2000.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Murakami, Haruki, 1949–

  [Andaguraundo, English]

  Underground: the Tokyo gas attack and the Japanese psyche /

  Haruki Murakami; translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76275-7

  1. Oumu Shinrikyo (Religious organization) 2. Terrorism—Japan.

  I. Birnbaum, Alfred. II. Gabriel, J. Philip. III. Title.

  BP605.O88 M8613 2001

  364.15’23’0952—dc21 00-069310

  www.vintagebooks.com

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