With the English release of Haruki Murakami¡¯s most recent novel, ¡°The City and Its Uncertain Walls,¡± now may be a good time to revisit an old favorite set in the same fantastical world for some deep reading. Out from Everyman¡¯s Library and heralded as an ¡°unabridged translation¡± by longtime Murakami collaborator Jay Rubin, ¡°End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland¡± provides an immersive, rollicking read that aptly showcases Murakami¡¯s distinctive magic.
Rubin¡¯s new edition restores over 100 pages of text excised from Alfred Birnbaum¡¯s 1991 translation and re-establishes the same word order of the novel¡¯s Japanese title. But existing fans of the novel needn¡¯t worry they missed anything significant the first time around.
¡°There was no kind of systematic attempt to reshape the novel or to suppress any particular attitude or any particular theme in Birnbaum¡¯s translation,¡± Rubin explains to The Japan Times. ¡°There were just lots of little cuts that added up to a lot of pages. One or two of the cuts were maybe three or four pages long, but most cuts were really just a few sentences at a time.¡±
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