WHO:
Haruki Murakami
WHAT:
1Q84
WHEN:
Published by Knopf October 28, 2011
WHY:
“Ambitious, sprawling, and thoroughly stunning…a dreamlike, strange, and wholly unforgettable epic.”
–KIRKUS, a starred review
“Literary alchemy of the highest order.
“This foray into what is unquestionably Murakami’s most vividly imagined parallel world begins simply, with two seemingly ordinary events: two lonely 10-year-olds, a boy and a girl, Tengo and Aomame, hold hands in an empty classroom, and for the next 20 years, while never seeing one another, they dream of meeting but are strangely paralyzed to make it happen. Then Aomame, a 30-year-old woman in 1984—and an assassin who kills men who abuse women—walks down an emergency exit from a Tokyo expressway and finds herself in another world, which she calls 1Q84, a world overseen by two moons and ruled, apparently, by the quixotic ‘little people.’
“Meanwhile, Tengo has rewritten a novel by an enigmatic 17-year-old girl that accurately describes the world of 1Q84. As the lives of Tengo, Aomame, and a Dostoyevskian private investigator, who works for a religious cult that worships the little people, swirl closer and closer together, Murakami draws the reader deeper and deeper into this utterly baffling universe, switching narration between the three principal characters, each of whom grasps only a small part of their two-mooned world. Gradually but inexorably, the tension builds, as we root passionately for Tengo and Aomame to find one another and hold hands again, so simple a human connection offering a kind of oasis in the midst of the unexplainable and the terrifying.
“When Murakami melds fantasy and realism, mystery and epic, it is no simple genre-bending exercise; rather, it is literary alchemy of the highest order.”
—Bill Ott, BOOKLIST, a starred review
“A massive new novel from the international sensation.
“1Q84 goes further than any Murakami novel so far, and perhaps than any novel before it, toward exposing the delicacy of the membranes that separate love from chance encounters, the kind from the wicked, and reality from what people living in the pent-up modern world dream about when they go to sleep under an alien moon.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY,
a starred review
“Perhaps Murakami’s finest work.”
—Terry Hong, LIBRARY JOURNAL, a starred review
Translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel.
Photo of Haruki Murakami by Elena Seibert.
Media Resources:
About the book | Read an Excerpt | Download the jacket | Watch the book trailer
Publicity:
Gabrielle Brooks | 212-572-2152 | gbrooks@randomhouse.com
No need to further comment on Murakami’s masterful work, but a note on the always terse, precise translation of Jay Rubin. Having read the two first volumes earlier in another language translation (unable to wait any longer!) it was a relief to come back to his superior work. A marvel.
I’m restarting from the beginning!
Surprised tough to find two typos in the first page of such a beautifully produced book: “Jana cek” twice.
Talking about typos: should read “though”!