Book- Fiction - Earthquake Modern City - Multiple First person accounts

July 29, 2020 12:09 AM

I am trying to remember a book i read around the 90's. There was an earthquake in a big city and it was told from various people first person accounts over a few days/weeks. The one I remember mainly was a women who was abused by her rich husband being rescued by the chauffeur but I think going back to the rich guy in the end.

It may have been set in Japan as I remember Asian characters but this could have just been me assuming it must be in Asia if it had Asian characters due to teen naivety. It was definitely fiction and and adult book (I would have been a teen reading it from my local library). I read it in the 90's but I think it was fairly new.

posted by Lesium to Writing & Language (5 answers total)

After the Quake, Haruki Murakami.
posted by minsies at 3:45 AM on July 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I think After the Quake too. The big city is Kobe. It wasn't published in English till 2002, but that's pretty close to the nineties, looking back from here. The story with the woman and the chauffeur would be "Thailand" - the chauffeur doesn't save her from the earthquake, but arguably does save her in another sense.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 5:45 AM on July 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

Aftershock?
posted by Splunge at 4:11 PM on July 29, 2020

Response by poster: I dont think it was After the Quake, 2002 is definitely too late (I was at uni by then) and the book I read was first person (the Wikipedia page refers to the stories written in first person). Aftershock doesn't sound right either. The Kobe idea might be an angle though....
posted by Lesium at 8:10 PM on July 29, 2020

Response by poster: And by rescued I mean physically rescued...she is at risk of being electrocuted/drowning (?)
posted by Lesium at 8:19 PM on July 29, 2020