Book review: After dark by Haruki Murakami

Title: After dark
Author: Haruki Murakami
Pages: 201

After dark is interesting but I just don’t get the point of the whole book. I think Murakami is commenting upon Japanese social ills like prostitution, over-working (especially through the night), gang violence, etc.

Mari is a teenage girl who is spending the night reading at a a restaurant.  It is here that she meets Takahashi, a boy who used to like her older siter Eri.  Eri, for some unknown reason (Wikipedia calls it social withdrawal or hikikomori), sleeps for most of the time. This has been going on for thew past couple of months and is perhaps one of the reasons a young girl like Mair is spending the night alone outside.

After some time Takahashi leaves her and goes to practice with his bansd after a while. Meanwhile a Chinese prostitute has been beaten up badly by an overworked computer programmer. The manager of the ‘love hotel’ where the beating took place, a retired female wrestler called Kaoru, does not know what to do with the girl as she speaks only Chinese. Takahashi tells Kaoru that Mari knows Chinese and where to find here (the restaurant).

Every chapter is set at a particular time in the night. It begins shortly before midnight and concludes at around 7AM.