After the Quake es el último libro de Murakami que he leído. Después de Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World necesitaba algo más ligero, y para eso nada mejor que las historias cortas de este autor.
En concreto After Quake narra diversas historias en torno al Terremoto de Kobe aportando diversas miradas, personajes y sucesos relacionados con esta terrible tragedia.

Es un libro bastante corto, consta sólo de 6 historias y de poco mas de 130 páginas así que se lee en muy poquito tiempo. Tal vez sea por eso que se me antojó algo corto y me quedé con ganas de más historias.

La historia que más me gustó es la última, llamada Honey pie y que podéis leer aquí. Curiosamente dos de las historias de este libro Honey Pie y Super-Frog saves Tokyo han sido llevadas al teatro.

Aquí os dejo alguno de los pasajes que más me han gustado.

“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself”

“You know Jun,” he said, “a fire can be any shape it wants to be. It’s free. So it can look like anything at all depending on what’s inside the person looking at it. If you get this deep, quiet kind of feeling when you look at a fire, that’s because it’s showing you the deep, quiet kind of feeling you have inside yourself”

“I’m an absolutely ordinary guy. Less than ordinary. I”m going bald, I’m getting a potbelly, I turned 40 last month. My feet are flat. The doctor told me recently that I have diabetic tendencies. It’s been three months or more since I last slept with a woman - and I had to pay for it. I do get some recognition within the division for my ability to collect on loans, but no real respect. I don’t have a single person who likes me, either at work or in my private life. I don’t know how to talk to people, and I’m bad with strangers, so I never make friends. I have no athletic ability, I’m tone-deaf, short, phimotic, nearsighted- and astigmatic. I live a horrible life. All I do is eat, sleep, and shit. I don’t know why I’m even living. Why should a person like me have to be the one to save Tokyo?”

I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love. But right now I have to stay here and keep watch over this woman and this girl. I will never let anyone -not anyone- try to put them into that crazy box not even if the sky should fall or the earth crack open with a roar.

Mas comentarios “Murakamianos”

• Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
• After Dark
• A Wild Sheep Chase
• Crónica del pájaro que da cuerda al mundo
• Kafka on the Shore