Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

**From the #1 *New York Times* bestselling author of *1Q84* and *The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle* comes a relentlessly inventive novel that dives deep into the very nature of consciousness.** * * * **“Fantastical, mysterious, and funny . . . a fantasy world that might have been penned by Franz Kafka.”— *The Philadelphia Inquirer*** Across two parallel narratives, Murakami draws readers into a mind-bending universe in which Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is a hyperkinetic novel that is at once hilariously funny and a deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.