Underground

Haruki Murakami

On 20th March 1995, members of the Aum Shinrikyo religious group carried out a terrorist attack on three lines of the Tokyo underground with lethal sarin gas. Amazingly, only twelve people lost their lives, but thousands suffered serious injury and long-lasting after-effects.

Murakami became interested in how such a thing could happen and decided to set about tracking down as many of the survivors as he could find and interviewing those who consented to be interviewed. 'Underground' tells the story of this horror in their own words. Like all good interviewers, Murakami lets his subjects speak for themselves, although his sympathies for the victims and their families is clear from his sensitive introductions and comments. As he puts it: "words can be practically useless at times, but as a writer they're all I have." Nevertheless, these personal testimonies are at times almost unbearably harrowing.

He also - by way of balance - decided to interview members and ex-members of Aum Shinrikyo in an attempt to discover what it is exactly that attracts intelligent and highly-qualified people to such sects. To a certain extent he succeeds - most are loners and those who could not fit in to 'normal' society - and there is the lingering, largely unvoiced doubt that there are no easy solutions to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.

Chilling stuff, well worth a read.