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Haruki Murakami. After the Quake: Stories. Jay Rubin, tr. New York. Knopf. 2002. 181 pages. $21. ISBN 0-375-41390-1
IT IS SOMETHING OF A MISNOMER to call After the Quake the latest work of Murakami Haruki (b. 1949), for it is a collection of six short stories that have all appeared in print elsewhere during the last year. Jay Rubin, a seasoned translator of Murakami's fiction, has brought to these stories the same vibrant voice that has animated his earlier translations. The distance one feels in these stories, this literary catharsis of sorts is perhaps fitting, for they were written after Murakami had returned to Japan. With the exception of "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo," in which a six-foot frog battles the giant worm to save Tokyo from an earthquake, much of the magic realism noted in Murakami's earlier fiction...