"Murakami is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performsthe trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers . . . Butwhile anyone can tell a story that resembles a dream, it's the rare artist,like this one, who can make us feel that we are dreaming it ourselves."--"The New York Times Book Review" " " The year is 1984 and the city isTokyo.
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver's enigmaticsuggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world aroundher. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls1Q84 --"Q is for 'question mark.' A world that bears a question."Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwritingproject. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual authorthat, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled. AsAomame's and Tengo's narratives converge over the course of this singleyear, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them evercloser: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; amysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitanpolice; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; ahideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlesslyefficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector. Alove story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia torival George Orwell's--"1Q84" is Haruki Murakami's most ambitiousundertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and atremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporarywriters.