The most beautiful woman in town - Charles Bukowski

I used to read Bukowski - translated into Italian - when I was a college student. Bukowski depicted a world of decadence, problems, poverty, alcohol addiction and free sex that could make my neat and standardized life in the province, at university, in the family, with ordinary people, among conventional ideas, a little less standardized. It was a comparison term, a paradoxical mix of a threat to avoid and a goal to achieve. I found it so fascinating.

Lost Horizon - James Hilton

Have you ever heard of something called "Shangri-la"? The mythical and mystical place hidden at the edge of the Tibetan plateau that has become a synonymous with “paradise on earth”, besides being the name of a well known luxury Asian hotel chain? Well, that’s an invention of James Hilton’s and it’s introduced in his book “Lost horizon”.

Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world - Murakami Haruki

Murakami, buy-one-get-one-free option. Two stories told through alternating chapters.
The first one is based, as usual in Murakami's novels, in a slightly dystopian version of modern day Japan, where two powerful organizations are fighting an all-out cyber-war, and a band of invisible mutants roam around a web of tunnels connected to Tokyo's subway system.

1Q84, Kafka on the shore, Killing commendatore - Murakami Haruki

These three books are typical Murakami Haruki's style, full of metaphors, surreal events, bizarre characters and historical references.

The story always starts when the lives of the main characters have reached some kind of a dead end. There is some deep meaning that must be deciphered in order to untangle the messy knot, a mystery that is most often hidden among the brush strokes of a mesmerizing painting or the chapters of a fancy novel.