Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Japanese世界 の 終り と ハード ボイルド·ワンダーランドSekai no owari to Hādoboirudo Wandārando ) is a fantastic novel by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami from the year 1985. He also plays in a grotesque Tokyo outlined the presence, called Hard-Boiled Wonderland and in a fantasy -like parallel world, the end of the world. The novel was published in 1995 by Suhrkamp Verlag in a translation by Annelie Ortmanns Suzuki and Jürgen Stalph.
Summary
In the first strand (Hard - Boiled Wonderland ) the narrator works as a " calculator " for the powerful data protection company " System". In opposition is the " factory ", the equivalent of the " Semioten " are the estimators of the system. For a mysterious scientist the narrator has to perform calculations on data protection, in a way that 's actually been banned long ago, and is the victim of a grotesque nightmare.
The second strand ( The end of the world) is about a nameless narrator also, who falls into a strange, timeless looking city. Upon entry, he must submit his shadow, which he and thereby also gradually loses his memories of his life before his soul. So confused as it appears at first before all of this as fast as he accepted the new, illogical world.
Both strands explain gradually each other on an independent, indirect way and actually hang closely together, although it rather seems that they have nothing to do with each other.
Translation
In the original Japanese Haruki Murakami used for the narrative in Hard-Boiled Wonderland the more formal pronoun watashi for the first person, while in the end of the world the more intimate form is used boku. Both in English and in German translation this stylistic form was simulated by the passages that are at the end of the world, are reproduced in the present tense.
In later editions, the translator of " end of the world " is no longer mentioned by name at his own request, because he does not agree with the changes that have been carried out by adapting to the new spelling.