"Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" Haruki Murakami

Murakami's writing was recommended to me because I had mentioned how much I enjoyed Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This novel certainly tended to the reasons why I like Marquez. It was rather ethereal and almost poetic in it's prose. Many scenes were almost hypnotically penned giving the reader an outer body feeling or, perhaps, the sensation of being in a dream. The novel follows two apparently separate stories. One is of a man in Japan who is hired to code research for a scientist and the other tells us the tale of a man whom is separated from his shadow in a strange land. The two stories share similar themes at moments but are set in different worlds with very different casts of characters. The novel is charming and I will gladly seek out more Murakami in the future.