After Dark: When the City Sleeps, Secrets Awaken

As midnight strikes in a near-empty all-night diner, Mari sits alone, sipping coffee and losing herself in a book—until a jazz musician interrupts her solitude. Both have missed the last train home. While he heads off to an overnight rehearsal, Mari plans to spend the hours reading, smoking, and waiting for dawn. But her quiet night takes an unexpected turn when a worker from the Alphaville Hotel arrives, seeking her help—one of the hotel's Chinese prostitutes has been assaulted, and Mari, fluent in Chinese, is the only one who can assist.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city, her sister Eri lies in a deep, unnatural sleep. For two months, she has been trapped in slumber, her body functioning at the bare minimum. But as the clock hits midnight, something stirs—an eerie flicker of life on a television that isn't even plugged in.

A master of the surreal, Haruki Murakami takes readers on a hypnotic journey through the mysteries of the night, where reality blurs and strange forces awaken in the shadows.