Baʻd-i zilzilah Persian 2025

After the Quake: Six Stories is a collection of short fiction by Haruki Murakami, published in Persian in a translation by Behrang Rajabi. The stories are set in the aftermath of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, yet rather than focusing on the physical destruction caused by the disaster, Murakami turns his attention to its psychological and emotional aftershocks in the lives of people who may be far removed from the site of the catastrophe.

Across the six stories, the characters confront loss, loneliness, fear, emotional disconnection, crises of identity, and memories long buried beneath the surface of consciousness. A woman fleeing the routines of her ordinary life, a doctor haunted by the past, a man facing an inner void after his wife leaves him, and an office worker who encounters a strange talking creature are among the figures who inhabit this collection. Everyday reality remains recognizable, but it is repeatedly unsettled by small openings into the uncanny and the surreal.

In After the Quake, Murakami narrows the boundary between reality and imagination and explores how a collective disaster can reverberate through private lives. The stories are written in a restrained and accessible style, yet they carry a dreamlike atmosphere and address themes such as grief, memory, love, solitude, fear, and the possibility of beginning again.

The collection was first published in 2000 under the English title After the Quake. This Persian edition, translated by Behrang Rajabi, was published by Cheshmeh Publishing and brings together six stories by one of the most widely read contemporary Japanese writers.