Book Recommendation
by ChrisJuly 9th, 2005 11:22 pm
Since we’ll be hearing about Thursday’s terrorist attacks in London for some time, I wanted to quickly recommend having a look at Underground by Haruki Murakami, in which he probes, via interview, the 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo’s subway system. In Underground, Murakami captures the very human side of a massive human tragedy, by conducting sweeping interviews with victims representing each of the subway lines attacked, as well as members of Aum Shinrikyo, the group that conducted the attack. It’s a very painful read, and one you won’t soon get past, but well worth it, as it looks so deeply at the type of event that is so hard to really see when confronted with screaming headlines and breathless talking heads peddling fear.
As a side note, I would highly recommend reading all of Murakami’s books, most of which, unlike Underground, are works of fiction. My personal favorite is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which is an amazing and genuinely bizarre novel.
