#10303 Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Haruki Murakami.
Haruki Murakami

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum. The novel toggles between two different narratives. In "Hard-Boiled Wonderland", the protagonist is a "Calcutec", a person able to process and encrypt data using his subconscious as an encryption key.  He works for a quasi-governmental System which is opposed by the criminal "Semiotecs" that work for a shadow organization. In "The End of the World", the unnamed narrator arrives in a strange, dream-like town surrounded by inpenetrable walls and filled with a somber inhabitants who have no minds and can't love or feel anything. He is given the role of "Dreamreader" and is taught how to read dreams from the skulls of unicorns. Eventually we learn that the town exists inside the "Hard-Boiled" character's subconscious. Very original work of imagination. Winner of the Tanizaki Literary prize (the Japanese equivalent of the Pulitzer).

Hardcover. First American Edition, First Printing. New York: Kodansha International Ltd, 1991. ISBN: 4770015445. #10303.
Fine in fine dust jacket.