Man without a Fridge 
Thomas Jones
- After the Quake by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin
- Earthshaking Science: What We Know (and Don’t Know) about Earthquakes by Susan Elizabeth Hough
On the morning of Tuesday, 17 January 1995, shortly before 6 o’clock, the city of Kobe was hit by the largest earthquake to strike Japan since 1923. During the twenty seconds of shaking that followed, more than five thousand people died, tens of thousands were injured and three hundred thousand were made homeless. At least £100 billion of damage was caused. Haruki Murakami, Japan’s most popular living novelist, whose parents’ house was destroyed in the earthquake, wasn’t in the city. He had left the country in the late 1980s, uncomfortable with the fame that accompanied the huge success of Norwegian Wood (1987), and gone to the United States. The protagonist of each of the six stories collected in After the Quake is someone who wasn’t there, but whose life has been profoundly affected by the event, and by their absence from it.
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Thomas Jones is one of the London Review’s contributing editors.
Other articles by this contributor:
Welly-Whanging · Alan Hollinghurst
This Is Not That Place · David Eggers escapes from Sudan
Whisky and Soda Man · J.G. Ballard
Rut after Rut after Rut · Denis Johnson’s Vietnam
Diary · My Life as a Geek
swete lavender · Molesworth
Diary · The Last Days of eBay
Forget the Dylai Lama · Bob Dylan
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