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Potent oral history (with some incisive commentary) by Murakami on the Sarin Gas attack in the Tokyo subway - 34 commuters detail their experiences, with much of the shock focusing on the mundane (a man still buying milk after he's badly poisoned). There's a metronomic beauty to the repetition of this section, which makes it such a shame that this version is severely abridged from the Japanese, which has twice the number of victims. The book then makes a remarkable pivot and treats members of th...
There was a terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway system carried out in 1995 by a religious cult called Aum. They released poison gas, called sarin, during rush hour on several different train lines, killing 13 people, and injuring hundreds of others. This book contains interviews of people caught in the attack, as well as interviews of members of the Aum cult, although none of them were perpetrators of the attack.As a reader from another country, I feel like I'm missing a lot. I read the book fe...
Words can be practically useless at times, but as a writer they're all I have. A group of people killed another group of people. I could be talking about a number of things. A description of the present. An incident in history. A prediction of the future. The final result of brainwashing. The beginning of a new era. A cause. A conclusion. The means. The end. A resolution. An excuse. The threat executed by an oppressor. The exigency fulfilled by a nation. Culture clash. Revolution. Murder. Sel
I should re-read this book someday.
** Books 117 - 2018 **4,3 of 5 painful stars! OMG! This books definitely unputdownable when i just start reading in the first pages! When i read the synopsis first i thought it just another fiction works from Haruki Murakami but I'm WRONG! This is the one that painful to me to read until the last pages! The idea of sensei compiles the story from Sarin's Gas attack Victims is really breaks my heart! So it is a book about Sarin's gas attack that happened in Tokyo Subway (Hibiya line/Chiyoda Line a...
"The truth of whatever is told will differ, however slightly, from what actually happened. This, however, does not make it a lie; it is unmistakably the truth, albeit in another form." It's probably unusual to pick a non-fiction as my first read by Mr. Haruki Murakami, but I believe it's one of my better decisions yet because I was able to get to see exactly how Mr. Haruki's writing process works, his dedication to research and details, wanting to stay true to each interviewee's account; how
The bestselling novelist Haruki Murakami gives a Studs Terkelish treatment to the Tokyo sarin gas attacks of 1995 which killed 12 and injured hundreds. There's a great deal about Terkel's methods to like (when Terkel uses them), but they fall flat here. I don't think the oral history treatment works well in this instance, in which every victim is in the same location (the subway system) and is subjected to the same assault; the approximately 30 victim accounts are extremely repetitive, which bec...
On March 20, 1995, Japan experienced its deadliest act of terrorism (and most serious attack since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings of 1945) when members of the 'Doomsday cult', Aum Shinrikyo, released the lethal nerve agent, sarin, on multiple Tokyo subway lines at rush hour. 13 people died, 50 were severely injured, and thousands of commuters had to be taken to hospital.The coordinated attacks shook the nation, known for its social cohesion and low crime rate, to the core, and there was no...
This is actually two books. Part I (1-223), titled "Underground" (Andaguraundo) was published in 1997; Part II ("The Place that was Promised") was written and published separately the following year.Part I consists of interviews with the victims (see updates; this section is too long and is tedious). Part II consists of interviews with members and former members of Aum Shinrikyo.And this is where things get really weird....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shin...The members of this cult -- who r...
[library]This is a book about the sarin attack in the Tokyo subway system on March 20, 1995. As you would expect from Murakami, it is thoughtful and careful. It consists primarily of interviews; the first part, Underground, is interviews with survivors; the second part, The Place that was Promised, is interviews with members and former members of Aum Shinrikyo, the cult responsible for the attacks. The translation, insofar as I can judge, seems good. I hope it's accurate. The one thing I would h...
Haruki Murakami's journalistic effort in recording a daring and controversial subject in relation to the hazardous Japanese cult organization led by Aum, an esoteric figure behind Aum Shinrikyo is a masterfully written, heartrending book. In this nonfiction work, Murakami-san has interviewed several victims of the nationally shocking, chemical-fueled terrorist attack carried out in a Tokyo subway train station, back in 1995. He gave us, readers, fairly neutral point of view and coverage of the w...
Murakami's Underground was by turns devastating and intriguing. There were moments I wanted to abandon humanity in a wastebin behind an abortion clinic and others when I sat there dumbfounded, thinking Wow, humanity, you're like the most interesting people on earth. Love to hate to love to hate. Again and again.That's what books about patent insanities do to me.Underground chronicles the psychological aftermath of Aum Shinrikyo's 1995 deposit of Sarin nerve gas across several of the mass-transit...