The Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Murakami's postmodern venture into science-fiction territory won the Tanizaki Prize, Japan's equivalent of the Pulitzer. In a near-future Japan, the nameless protagonist is a man who has had his brain surgically altered by his employer, the Calcutecs, to encrypt data in a special way. The new client requesting his services turns out to be the extremely eccentric scientist who invented the operation. Suddenly, the protagonist becomes central to a battle among the Calcutecs; their rivals, the Semiotecs; and miscellaneous independent operators intent on gaining control of the scientist's research and getting their hands on a gift given to the protagonist by the scientist: a unicorn skull. This science-fictional story is interleaved with what seems to be a fantasy narrative, in which a nameless protagonist comes to stay in a walled Town where unicorns live and people's shadows have an independent, but weak, existence. This protagonist is assigned the job of "reading dreams"--i.e., picking up psychic impressions--from skulls, and spends his spare time puzzling out what the Town is, how he got there, and how to leave.