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HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND ANDTHE END OF THE WORLD
by
Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949. He met his wife, Yoko, at university andthey opened a jazz club in Tokyo called
Peter Cat 
. The massive success of his novel
 Norwegian Wood 
(1987) made him a national celebrity. He fled Japan and did not returnuntil 1995. His other books include
after the quake, Dance Dance Dance, A Wild SheepChase, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Underground 
, his first work of non-fiction,
Sputnik Sweetheart 
and
South of the Border, West of the Sun
. He has translated into Japanese thework of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, John Irving and Raymond Carver.Alfred Birnbaum was born in Washington D.C. in 1957 and grew up in Tokyo. He is thetranslator of 
 Dance Dance Dance
and
 A Wild Sheep Chase
. He has also translated worksby Natsuki Ikezawa, Kyoji Kobayashi, Miyuki Miyabe, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa andGen'ichiro Takahashi and compiled the anthology
 Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction
.
 Also by Haruki Murakami
 Fiction
 Dance Dance DanceThe Elephant Vanishes A Wild Sheep Chase Norwegian Wood The Wind-up Bird ChronicleSouth of the Border, West of the SunSputnik Sweetheart 
 
after the quake
 Non-Fiction
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
 Haruki MurakamiHARD-BOILEDWONDERLAND ANDTHE END OF THEWORLDTRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE BYAlfred Birnbaum
Elevator, Silence, Overweight
THE elevator continued its impossibly slow ascent. Or at least I imagined it was ascent.There was no telling for sure: it was so slow that all sense of direction simply vanished. Itcould have been going down for all I knew, or maybe it wasn't moving at all. But let's justassume it was going up. Merely a guess. Maybe I'd gone up twelve stories, then downthree. Maybe I'd circled the globe. How would I know?Every last thing about this elevator was worlds apart from the cheap die-cut job in myapartment building, scarcely one notch up the evolutionary scale from a well bucket.You'd never believe the two pieces of machinery had the same name and the samepurpose. The two were pushing the outer limits conceivable as elevators.First of all, consider the space. This elevator was so spacious it could have served as anoffice. Put in a desk, add a cabinet and a locker, throw in a kitchenette, and you'd stillhave room to spare. You might even squeeze in three camels and a mid-range palm treewhile you were at it. Second, there was the cleanliness. Antiseptic as a brand-new coffin.The walls and ceiling were absolutely spotless polished stainless steel, the floor
of 00

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