Underground, unpublished so far in Poland, is a perfectly written non-fiction book, the theme of which is the attack of the Aum Shinrikyō sect on the Tokyo metro in 1995 with the use of toxic sarin.
Survivors and attackers expose themselves fully to Murakami, talking about the trauma and the consequences of the events, and for many of them this is the first opportunity to share their memories. The author gives the characters the floor – they admit to their hidden weaknesses, intrusive thoughts and a lack of faith in returning to normal, to the “self” before the attack. The whole book is summed up by the essay Blind Nightmare: Where Are We Japanese Going?, in which Murakami criticizes the hidden facts, the manipulation of information by the media, as well as the cultural patterns and traps that the Japanese succumbed to, trying to forget as soon as possible the event that left in the entire society deep wounds.
