Haruki Murakami's "End of the World and Hard-boiled Wonderland" A New Translation by Jay Rubin

A few days ago, I wrote a blog post on Haruki Murakami's novel End of the World and Hard-boiled Wonderland. As I mentioned in the post, I had read Alfred Birnbaum's 1991 translation, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World in October and after reading Murakami's latest novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami the first week of December, I wanted to read Jay Rubin's new translation of End of the World........

At the time of that blog post, I had only read about 65% of Rubin's translation. I write:
It's odd. I seem to have a good recollection of the "End of the World" section, although in many ways, the "Hard-Boiled Wonderland" section seems almost completely new to me. It's still difficult for me to connect the two sections. With luck, I'll be able to do that when I finish this re-read.

I went to readings list to compare the length of time it had taken me to read the two different translations. The new translation was taking a bit longer. I read exclusively e-books now, so I did not immediately notice the difference in the actual length of the books. I opened both files and saw right away that in my PC's e-reader, the difference was obvious - Birnbaum's translation contains 273 pages - Rubin's translation comes to 404 pages! It's little wonder that much of the "Hard-Boiled Wonderland" section seemed completely new. Had these two books been in print form, I would have seen the difference. In his afterword to his translation, Rubin explains why Murakami wanted him to restore the pages omitted in Birnbaum's translation.

Having read the Rubin translation, I can connect the two sections. Anyone wanting to read Sekai no Owari to Hādo-Boirudo Wandārando should choose the newly released Rubin translation - End of the World and Hard-boiled Wonderland..