Discovering Murakami is one of the good things that happened to me this Christmas. The last time I was totally hooked by a book was when I bought The Name of the Rose. That was a good 20 years ago, while on a trip to Sweden.
While Eco's book is absorbing by its sheer richness of prose, reading Murakami is like getting in and out of a dream while fully awake. The emotions just well up and you don't know where the next punch is coming from.
It is very stimulating in a strange kind of way, maybe surreal is how to put it. Camus or Kafka may get one to get to view life from new and unexpected angles and make us see psychedelic colours in our mind, but with Murakami it is like being in the centre of things as they explode or come into being.
Some 5 years ago I met a lady who was deep with Deepak Chopra. I cannot quite recall what or how exactly she said it; it was something to do with practicing detachment - I was so moved by it that there was some deep rearrangement of the contents of my memory. I mean, how else can you explain it, the next time I went to the ATM machine I could not remember the six digit PIN I have been using for the past six years or so.
The book with me is Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, which has won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.
While Eco's book is absorbing by its sheer richness of prose, reading Murakami is like getting in and out of a dream while fully awake. The emotions just well up and you don't know where the next punch is coming from.
It is very stimulating in a strange kind of way, maybe surreal is how to put it. Camus or Kafka may get one to get to view life from new and unexpected angles and make us see psychedelic colours in our mind, but with Murakami it is like being in the centre of things as they explode or come into being.
Some 5 years ago I met a lady who was deep with Deepak Chopra. I cannot quite recall what or how exactly she said it; it was something to do with practicing detachment - I was so moved by it that there was some deep rearrangement of the contents of my memory. I mean, how else can you explain it, the next time I went to the ATM machine I could not remember the six digit PIN I have been using for the past six years or so.
The book with me is Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, which has won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.
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