Already an international best-seller, Japanese author Haruki Murakami’s latest novel “1Q84” is a story of love, heist and mystery set in Toyko in the years 1984 and 1Q84.
After a young woman named Masami Aomame, in a desperate attempt to get to an important meeting on time, exits her taxi on a crowded highway and takes a fire-escape stairway, she begins to notice more and more irregularities in the world, such as the sky having an extra moon, smaller and greener than the original.
Soon, Aomame is convinced she has left the world she knew and has entered a new world and a new time, which she titles 1Q84.
In 1Q84, the police wear new uniforms, carry different weapons and sometimes befriend assassins. There are secretive religious sects and people become irretrievably lost. There are chrysalises made from the air and mysterious Little People that give directions to leaders of the people in the world, although no one is sure if these Little People are here for the better or the worse.
At the same time Aomame is entering this new world, a handsome math professor and freelance novelist Tengo Kwana has been asked to ghostwrite a story in an attempt to help a young girl create a bestseller. Although he never felt good about the deception, his feelings of guilt grow as he begins to see exact descriptions from the book come to life before his eyes.
With the help of Fuka-Eri, the 17-year-old original author of Tengo’s work, Tengo and Aomame’s paths intersect in ways that would only be possible in 1Q84.
While heavily involved with fantasy and magic, the characters questionings and rejections of the fantastic make the novel seem like an honest memoir of explorers returned from a foreign land. And thanks to Murakami’s beautiful imagery, reader’s will be having to fight the urge to check the night sky and count the number of moons.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
