After the Quake

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For the characters in after the quake, the Kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago.

Satsuki has spent thirty years hating one man: did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? Miyake left his family in Kobe to make midnight bonfires on a beach hundreds of miles away. Fourteen-year-old Sala has nightmares that the Earthquake Man is trying to stuff her inside a little box. Katagiri returns home to find a giant frog in his apartment on a mission to save Tokyo from a massive burrowing worm.

''When he gets angry, he causes earthquakes,'' says Frog. ''And right now he is very, very angry.''

© Haruki Murakami 2000 (P) Penguin Audio 2021