Showing results by author "Alfred Birnbaum" in All Categories

A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan. Unicorn skulls and voracious librarians. John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story, post-modern manifesto. All this rolled into one rip-roaring novel, End of the World and Hard-boiled Wonderland is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami’s international following.

A 20-something advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend and casually appropriates the image for an insurance company's advertisement. What he doesn't realise 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. Thus begins a surreal and elaborate quest that takes our hero from the urban haunts of Tokyo to the remote and snowy mountains of northern Japan.

The Wrong Goodbye pits homicide detective Eiji Futamura against a shady Chinese business empire and US military intelligence in the docklands of recession Japan. After the frozen corpse of immigrant barman Tran Binh Long washes up in midsummer near Yokosuka US Navy Base, Futamura meets a strange customer from Tran's bar. Vietnam vet pilot Billy Lou Bonney talks Futamura into hauling three suitcases of 'goods' to Yokota US Air Base late at night and flies off leaving a dead woman behind.