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1Q84 (Vintage International) Kindle Edition

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 9,809 ratings

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A tremendous accomplishment. It does every last blessed thing a masterpiece is supposed to—and a few things we never even knew to expect.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Brilliant . . . an irresistibly engaging literary fantasy.”—The Washington Post
 
The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.
 
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.

As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.

A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—
1Q84 is a striking feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.
Popular Highlights in this book

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, October 2011: The year is 1984, but not for long. Aomame, on her way to meet a client--the gravid implications of which only come clear later--sits in a taxi, stuck in traffic. On a lark, she takes the driver's advice, bolts from the cab, walks onto the elevated Tokyo expressway, descends an emergency ladder to the street below, and enters a strange new world.

In parallel, a math teacher and aspiring novelist named Tengo gets an interesting offer. His editor has come upon an entry for a young writer's literary prize, a story that, despite its obvious stylistic drawbacks, strikes a deeply moving chord with those who've read it. Its author is a mysterious 17-year-old, and the editor proposes that Tengo quietly rewrite the story for the final round of the competition.

So begins Haruki Murakami's
magnus opus, an epic of staggering proportions. As the tale progresses, it folds in a deliciously intriguing cast of characters: a physically repulsive private investigator, a wealthy dowager with a morally ambiguous mission, her impeccably resourceful bodyguard, the leader of a somewhat obscure and possibly violent religious organization, a band of otherworldly "Little People," a door-to-door fee collector seemingly immune to the limits of space and time, and the beautiful Fuka-Eri: dyslexic, unfathomable, and scarred.

Aomame names her new world "1Q84" in honor of its mystery: "Q is for 'question mark.' A world that bears a question.'" Weaving through it, central motifs--the moon, Janáček's Sinfonietta, George Orwell's 1984--acquire powerful resonance, and Aomame and Tengo's paths take on a conjoined life of their own, dancing with a protracted elegance that requires nearly 1,000 pages to reach its crowning denouement.

1Q84 was a runaway best seller in its native Japan, but it's more instructive to frame the book's importance in other ways. For one, it's hard not to compare it to James Joyce's Ulysses. Both enormous novels mark their respective author's most ambitious undertaking by far, occupy an artificially discrete unit of time (Ulysses, one day; 1Q84, one year), and can be read as having a narrative structure that evinces an almost quantum-mechanical relationship to reality, which is not to say that either author intended this.

More to the point, the English translation of
1Q84--easily the grandest work of world literature since Roberto Bolaño's 2666--represents a monstrous literary event. Now would somebody please award Murakami his Nobel Prize? --Jason Kirk

Review

“A book that . . . makes you marvel, reading it, at all the strange folds a single human brain can hold . . . A grand, third-person, all encompassing meganovel. It is a book full of anger and violence and disaster and weird sex and strange new realities, a book that seems to want to hold all of Japan inside of it . . . Murakami has established himself as the unofficial laureate of Japan—arguably its chief imaginative ambassador, in any medium, to the world: the primary source, for many millions of readers, of the texture and shape of his native country . . . I was surprised to discover, after so many surprising books, that he managed to surprise me again.”
—Sam Anderson,
The New York Times Magazine
 
“Profound . . . A multilayered narrative of loyalty and loss . . . A fully articulated vision of a not-quite-nightmare world . . . A big sprawling novel [that] achieves what is perhaps the primary function of literature: to reimagine, to reframe, the world . . .  At the center of [
1Q84’s] reality . . . is the question of love, of how we find it and how we hold it, and the small fragile connections that sustain us, even (or especially) despite the odds . . . This is a major development in Murakami’s writing . . . A vision, and an act of the imagination.”
—David L. Ulin,
Los Angeles Times
 
“Murakami is clearly one of the most popular and admired novelists in the world today, a brilliant practitioner of serious, yet irresistibly engaging, literary fantasy . . . Once you start reading
1Q84, you won’t want to do much else until you’ve finished it . . . Murakami possesses many gifts, but chief among them is an almost preternatural gift for suspenseful storytelling . . . Despite its great length, [his] novel is tightly plotted, without fat, and he knows how to make dialogue, even philosophical dialogue, exciting . . . Murakami’s novels have been translated into a score of languages, but it would be hard to imagine that any of them could be better than the English versions by Jay Rubin, partnered here with Philip ­Gabriel . . . There’s no question about the sheer enjoyability of this ­gigantic novel, both as an eerie thriller and as a moving love story . . . I read the book in three days and have been thinking about it ever since.”
—Michael Dirda,
The Washington Post
 
“Fascinating . . . A remarkable book in which outwardly simple sentences and situations snowball into a profound meditation on our own very real dystopian trappings . . . One of those rare novels that clearly depict who we are now and also offer tantalizing clues as to where literature may be headed . . . I’d be curious to know how Murakami’s yeoman translators Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel divided up the work . . . because there are no noticeable bumps in the pristine and deceptively simple prose . . . More than any author since Kafka, Murakami appreciates the genuine strangeness of our real world, and he’s not afraid to incorporate elements of surrealism or magical realism as tools to help us see ourselves for who we really are.
1Q84 is a tremendous accomplishment. It does every last blessed thing a masterpiece is supposed to—and a few things we never even knew to expect.”
—Andrew Ervin,
The San Francisco Chronicle
 
“[
1Q84] is fundamentally different from its predecessors. We realize before long that it is a road. And what the writer has laid down is a yellow brick road. It passes over stretches of deadly desert, to be sure, through strands of somniferous poppies, and past creatures that hurl their heads, spattering us with spills of kinked enigma. But the destination draws us: We crave it, and the craving intensifies as we go along (unlike so many contemporary novels that are sampler menus with neither main course nor appetite to follow). More important, the travelers we encounter, odd and wildly disparate as they are, possess a quality hard to find in Murakami’s previous novels: a rounded, sometimes improbable humanity with as much allure as mystery. It is not just puzzlement they present, but puzzled tenderness; most of all in the two leading figures, Aomame and Tengo. Converging through all manner of subplot and peril, they arouse a desire in us that almost mirrors their own . . . Murakami makes us want to follow them; we are reluctant to relinquish them. Who would care about the yellow brick road without Scarecrow’s, Woodman’s and Lion’s freakiness and yearning? What is a road, particularly Murakami’s intricately convoluted road, without its human wayfarers?”
—Richard Eder,
The Boston Globe
 
1Q84 is one of those books that disappear in your hands, pulling you into its mysteries with such speed and skill that you don’t even notice as the hours tick by and the mountain of pages quietly shrinks . . . I finished 1Q84 one fall evening, and when I set it down, baffled and in awe, I couldn’t help looking out the window to see if just the usual moon hung there or if a second orb had somehow joined it. It turned out that this magical novel did not actually alter reality. Even so, its enigmatic glow makes the world seem a little strange long after you turn the last page. Grade: A.”
—Rob Brunner,
Entertainment Weekly
 
“A 932-page Japanese novel set in Tokyo in which the words ‘sushi’ and ‘sake’ never appear but there are mentions of linguine and French wine, as well as Proust, Faye Dunaway,
The Golden Bough, Duke Ellington, Macbeth, Churchill, Janáèek, Sonny and Cher, and, give the teasing title, George Orwell? Welcome to the world of Haruki Murakami . . . A symmetrical and multi-layered yarn, as near to a 19th-century three-decker as it is possible to be . . . The label of fantasy-realism has been stuck to it, but it actually has more of a Dickensian or Trollopian structure . . . Explicit, yet subtle and dream-like, combining viciousness with whimsy . . . this is Murakami’s unflagging and masterful take on the desire and pursuit of the Whole.”
—Paul Theroux,
Vanity Fair
 
“Do you miss the girl with the dragon tattoo? Do you long for the thrill of following her adventures again through three volumes of exciting, intelligent fiction? If so, I have good news for you. She’s got a sort of soul sister in one of the two main characters in Haruki Murakami’s wonderful novel
1Q84 . . . With more than enough narrative and intellectual heft to make it enjoyable for anyone with a taste for moving representations of modern consciousness in the magical realist mode, this story may easily carry you away to a new world and keep you there for a long time . . . The deep and resonant plot . . . unfolds at a leisurely pace but in compelling fashion by luring us along with scenes of homicidal intrigue, literary intrigue, religious fanaticism, physical sex, metaphysical sex and asexual sex. And music . . . Murakami’s main characters find themselves drawn toward each other as irresistibly, magnetically, hypnotically, soulfully and physically as any characters in Western fiction. Given the plain-spoken but appealing nature of the prose (translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel), most of you will feel that same power as an insinuating compulsion to read on, despite the enormous length, hoping against hope for a happy ending under a sky with either two moons or one. Two moons—two worlds—a girl with—900 pages—1Q84 is a gorgeous festival of words arranged for maximum comprehension and delicious satisfaction.”
—Alan Cheuse, NPR
 
“Murakami’s new novel is the international literary giant at his uncanny, mesmerizing best . . . The spell cast by Murakami’s fiction is formed in the tension between his grounded accounts of everyday life and the otherworldly forces that keep intruding on that life, propelling the characters into surreal adventures . . . Translation is at the center of what Murakami does; not a translation from one tongue to another, but the translation of an inner world into this, the outer one. Very few writers speak the truths of that secret, inner universe more fluently.”
—Laura Miller,
Salon
 
“Bewitching and extraordinarily unsettling . . . Part noir crime drama, part love story, and part hallucinatory riff on
1984 . . . Murakami paces a story as well as any writer alive. He knows how to tell a love story without getting cute. He understands how to blend realism and fantasy (magical realism if you want to get all literary about it) in just the right proportions. And he has a knack for writing about everyday matters—fixing dinner, going for a walk—in such a way that the events at hand, no matter how mundane, are never boring . . . Most impressive, he knows how to inject the logic and atmosphere of dreams into his fiction without becoming coy or vague. He’s Kafka-esque to the extent that he’s not interested in why or how a man may have turned into an insect overnight, but in how the man deals with his new situation. And like Beckett, he furnishes his dreamscapes with a mere handful of carefully chosen props—a tree, a streetlight, a playground sliding board—specifics that ground a scene but leave room for the reader to fill in details. This is perhaps the key point: he makes you, the reader, his collaborator. What he leaves out is as important as what he includes, because it encourages you to fill in the blanks in the canvas . . . Murakami is one of the very few novelists—Dickens comes most easily to mind—who can make a serious, play-by-the-rules reader cheat and jump ahead to find out what’s happened to a character . . . Even while we are being entertained by the weirdness of the world he’s creating, we feel a gnawing anxiety that this same book is unraveling our own sense of normality. You don’t know where things are going while you read it, and you can’t say exactly where you’ve been when you’re finished, but everything around you looks different somehow. If this is fiction as funhouse, it is very serious fun, and you enter at the risk of your own complacency.”
—Malcolm Jones,
Newsweek
 
“If you haven’t previously read Murakami . . . this is a good introduction to his Lewis-Carroll-meets-Mister-Rogers style, a distinctive blend of the wild and the ordinary that can be as engaging as Wonderland itself. If you’ve read his previous book, you’ll find a lot to enjoy here . . .
1Q84 has a big, romantic heart and deserves to be celebrated on our shores.”
—Josh Emmons,
People (3.5/4 stars)
 
“[
1Q84] gets off to a vintage Murakami start: eerie wrinkles in an otherwise ordinary Tokyo day. A woman stuck in traffic decides to get out and walk. A struggling novelist is roped into a shady writing project. But with every page, the ready edges closer to an Orwellian rabbit hole. And when the plunge comes, it brings all the trippy delights of Murakami’s unsettling imagination: a vanishing, a parallel world with two moons, and ‘Little People’ who make Big Brother look like an oaf.”
—Devin Gordon,
GQ
 
“Voracious visionary Haruki Murakami’s
1Q84 mixes down-the-rabbit-hole fantasy with out-there science fiction for a superhefty but accessible adventure.”
—Lisa Shea,
Elle
 
“Powerful . . . In
1Q84, award-winning Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami skips between alternate worlds, offering readers a moving love story in what is perhaps his most ambitious novel yet . . . An unstoppably readable, deeply moving love story that cements Murakami’s reputation as a uniquely compassionate and imaginative novelist who’s among the leading voices of his global generation . . . Murakami likes to blur the boundaries of reality, and in this sense 1Q84 is his most intricate work . . . Aomame and Tengo work their way towards each other and out of the year 1Q84 like divers straining for the surface. Finishing the book I felt as if I, too, were coming to the surface; days later the world still does not feel the way it used to.”
—Kevin Hartnett,
The Christian Science Monitor
 
1Q84 is extraordinarily ambitious . . . Beguiling and ridiculously entertaining . . . Murakami has created the big, beautiful book so many people have been waiting for. Before it even arrived in this country, 1Q84 was one of the most chattered-about titles of the fall. We got our hopes up—and he didn’t let us down.”
—Kevin Canfield,
The Kansas City Star
 
“Murakami has created his genuine masterpiece, one that reaches out to fans while also satisfying the critics who have called for a more deft use of symbolism and literary worldliness in his work . . .  In this book, Murakami simplifies his familiar artistic elements, leaving us with a readable pair of intertwined stories that wind up on the same, enjoyable track. For readers willing to enter Murakami’s literary marathon, the outcome will be one to remember.”
—Jeremy C. Owens,
San Jose Mercury News
 
“Lose yourself in the nearly 1,000 pages of Murakami’s alternately mesmerizing and menacing world, living for large stretches of each day with its characters, and time actually shifts and becomes harder to measure—one of the many themes, as it happens, in this big and brilliant book . . . It’s the quest for such shared experience, between writer and reader in the dream world they inhabit together, that explains why we read fiction—that magical carpet whisking us from the lonely prison of the self into the hearts and minds of others . . . It may not be easy traveling to another world; it’s often hard enough getting around in our own. But what is true for this novel’s determined protagonists will go double for its faithful readers: Take the time to get carried away, and time itself—as well as the way you think about how you spend yours—will take on new dimensions. It’s a mind-blowing experience. Great novels always are.”
—Mike Fischer,
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
 
“[A] masterwork . . . [Murakami has] crafted what may well become a classic literary rendering of pre-2011 Japan . . . Orwell wrote his masterpiece to reflect a future dystopia through a Cold War lens . . . Similarly, Murakami’s
1Q84 captures attitudes and circumstances that characterize Japanese life before the March earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster. Reading 1Q84, once can’t help but sense already how things have changed.”
—Lee Makela,
Cleveland Plain Dealer
 
“Always intriguing . . .
1Q84 is a huge novel in every sense . . . putting it down is not an option . . . The reader who steps into its time flow only reluctantly comes ashore.”
—Sherryl Connelly,
New York Daily News
 
1Q84 is a tremendous feat and a triumph . . . A must-read for anyone who wants to come to terms with contemporary Japanese culture.”
—Lindsay Howell,
Baltimore Examiner
 
“Perhaps one of the most important works of science fiction of the year . . .
1Q84 does not disappoint . . . [It] envelops the reader in a shifting world of strange cults and peculiar characters that is surreal and entrancing.”
—Matt Staggs, Suvudu.com
 
“There’s no denying that Haruki Murakami’s
1Q84 . . . is an impressive achievement, both for its already accomplished author and for the two separate translators who took on the not inconsequential task of translating the book from Murakami’s native Japanese into English. Equally impressive is the author’s facility at working in this long form—the story moves, it seems, effortlessly through hundreds of pages, and the reader, too, glides easily from page to page as if the book were a third of its length . . . What’s most remarkable about Murakami’s novel, however, is neither its prose style nor its accompanying emotional distance: it’s its scope. Most so-called doorstopper novels contain multitudes of characters, conflicts, decades, or even footnotes. 1Q84, at its heart, is primarily a story of two separated lovers. It takes place in a short time frame and in a single city, but it’s enriched by Murakami’s philosophical musings and his uniquely visionary form of fantasy.”
—Norah Piehl, BookReporter.com
 
“Murakami’s dystopian magnum opus . . .
1Q84 unfolds as a science-fiction thriller, and despite the pointed Orwellian reference, it is closer in spirit to the work of Philip K. Dick. Fantastic elements seamlessly integrate with the mundane to create a world much like, if not quite like, our own . . . The supporting cast . . . is lovingly lifted from classic pulp fiction archetypes, and roots the novel in the noir mystery genre as well. Pulp fiction, indeed, but on a grand scale—as ambitious, quirky and imaginative as only Murakami can be.”
—Robert Weibezahl,
BookPage
 
“Murakami’s trademark plainspoken oddness is on full display in this story of lapsed childhood friends Aomame and Tengo, now lonely adults in 1984 Tokyo, whose destinies may be curiously intertwined . . . Murakami’s fans know that his focus has always been on the quiet strangeness of life, the hidden connections between perfect strangers, and the power of the non sequitur to reveal the associative strands that weave our modern world.
1Q84 goes further than any Murakami novel so far, and perhaps further 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 (starred review)
 
“Unquestionably Murakami’s most vividly imagined parallel 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 (starred review)
 
“Ambitious, sprawling and thoroughly stunning . . . Orwellian dystopia, sci-fi, the modern world (terrorism, drugs, apathy, pop novels)—all blend in this dreamlike, strange and wholly unforgettable epic.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
 
“At the core of this work is a spectacular love story about a girl and a boy who briefly held hands when they were both ten. That said, with the fiercely imaginative Murakami as author, the story’s exposition is gloriously labyrinthine . . . Originally published in Japan as three volumes, each of which were instant best sellers, this work—perhaps Murakami’s finest—will surely have the same success in its breathlessly anticipated all-in-one English translation. Murakami aficionados will delight in recognizing traces of earlier titles, especially
A Wild Sheep Chase, Norwegian Wood, and even Underground.
—Terry Hong,
Library Journal (starred review)

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004LROUW2
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (October 25, 2011)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 25, 2011
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3286 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 1185 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0307476464
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 9,809 ratings

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4.4 out of 5 stars
9,809 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the story engaging with interesting mysteries and a blend of the mundane and magical. They describe the book as an enjoyable read with an imaginative plot. Readers appreciate the compelling characters and their development. However, some feel the writing is repetitive and lacks clarity. Opinions differ on the length, with some finding it too long while others consider it well-written and fast-paced.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

677 customers mention "Story quality"522 positive155 negative

Customers find the story engaging and complex. They appreciate the author's skill in setting up intriguing mysteries and blending the mundane with the magical. The book is described as an enjoyable fantasy with an enticing heroine. While some readers felt the story left unanswered questions, overall they found it a brilliant novel that creates a sense of magic.

"...Because of this fluidity, it was so easy to become hypnotized by the events that took place and are swept away with the plot twists that keep the..." Read more

"...the end of the day, in spite of all the craziness, this novel is a love story about two people searching for each other in today's hectic modern..." Read more

"...is no ordinary novel as it spans more than 1000 pages; yet, it is captivating and hard to put down at times. Society is in ruin...." Read more

"...Is this fodder for the next book? Sex is huge in this book and I feel that it is well-written while pushing limits...." Read more

600 customers mention "Readability"527 positive73 negative

Customers enjoy the book. They find it an enjoyable read, with good writing and intriguing story. Some appreciate the trance-like quality and consider it a great series or trilogy.

"...of everything negative, Murakami's characters are what make 1Q84 a masterpiece...." Read more

"...it fights so hard to do what it wants, because it made me feel amazing while I read it, and because it's highs are so much better than it's lows are..." Read more

"...Murakami respectively hails as one the best selling-authors in Japan and of the world to say the least...." Read more

"...seems long and I felt as reading it that this book would make a great series/trilogy...." Read more

257 customers mention "Imagination"206 positive51 negative

Customers find the book's imagination engaging. They appreciate the author's skill in combining disparate imaginative elements and bringing them together through clever use of small details. The plot is described as articulate and interesting, with powerful mythology and literary elements. Overall, readers describe the book as an insightful exploration of the creative process.

"...and happy about the good things this book has to offer: the powerful mythos, the advanced literary techniques, and hope for the future of literature..." Read more

"...life in this world not only becomes bearable; it becomes abundantly meaningful and satisfying...." Read more

"...The little people fascinated me. I wanted to know more about them but the author wasn't going to share everything...." Read more

"...it is an interesting look at Japan in 1984, and the temporal and cultural details are an enjoyable trip to the near-past in a country many of us do..." Read more

199 customers mention "Character development"141 positive58 negative

Customers find the characters compelling and engaging. The book features two main characters whose stories alternate.

"...This character is likeable and has ways to talk to people. The ones hating him are more than the ones who like him...." Read more

"...is masculine in her lack of emotional episodes, yet is a likeable protagonist even as an assassin...." Read more

"...however, is not the length or the ending but the way he eliminates key characters as the story goes on, characters that are not given a follow-up..." Read more

"...the behavior, motivation, emotion, morality, and existential philosophy of the characters and the culture they are embedded in with minimalist color..." Read more

357 customers mention "Writing quality"233 positive124 negative

Customers have different views on the writing quality. Some find it well-written and fast-paced, with simple language and beautiful prose. Others feel the writing is not concise, confusing, or easy to read. The dialogue and descriptions seem stilted and the book is complex, making it difficult to understand some details.

"...The words flowed so evenly, so much so that the reader may forget (as I did many times) that they are reading a translated novel...." Read more

"...What it is is a great story, thematically thin and deceptively simple in its telling, yet compelling in its hold on the reader...." Read more

"...gramatically incorrect or unclear, however, it does make the dialogue sound stilted and the descriptions to sometimes be overblown and almost campy..." Read more

"...to be a writer and get published, is rather a fun character and relatable. I, myself, am a person whose dream is to be published one day...." Read more

187 customers mention "Length"61 positive126 negative

Customers have different views on the book's length. Some find it an easy read with gripping final sections, while others feel it's too long and feels underwhelming.

"...During the first "Book", the length really bugged me...." Read more

"...A lengthy novel of over 1,100 pages, 1Q84 has two alternating storylines; one concerning Tengo Kawana, a cram school math teacher and the other..." Read more

"...or books, and I have to say, it is no ordinary novel as it spans more than 1000 pages; yet, it is captivating and hard to put down at times...." Read more

"...As a reader you have the power to scan those pages. Yes this book seems long and I felt as reading it that this book would make a great series/..." Read more

148 customers mention "Pacing"66 positive82 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some find it fast-paced for most of the story, with days flowing smoothly and unnoticeably. Others mention that the plot is often slow and tends to drag, especially in the final 200 pages or so.

"...Slowly, everything slows down, and the new relaxed pace is a difficult adjustment to make after such a wild ride and especially since you are so..." Read more

"...For a book of nearly 1000 pages, it was one of the most quickly reading books I've read in recent years...." Read more

"...level, this book almost fails: the translation can be rough, the plot is often slow and tends to drag, and the characters seem unrealistic and..." Read more

"...Even simple sentences were compelling: "The days flowed by smoothly, regularly, uneventfully."..." Read more

84 customers mention "Repetition"6 positive78 negative

Customers find the book repetitive in its descriptions of characters and exposition. They mention it lacks cohesion and is repetitive at times. The prose becomes repetitive, leading to rambling and boring scenes.

"...across an unfortunate review that stated the book was, somehow, too repetitive...." Read more

"...Unbearably redundant at times. Case in point: How many pages do we need to explain the same physical characteristics of Ushikawa?..." Read more

"...The MC, Tengo, is boring as a person (we get deeply immersed in his boring life) and I have to imagine he reflects the author in many ways: as a..." Read more

"...And yet, it is also so darn repetitive. How many more times do we have to hear via internal monologue what Tengo witnessed as a child?..." Read more

Great Story, definitely my favorite read from Murakami
4 out of 5 stars
Great Story, definitely my favorite read from Murakami
The book itself was no problem and came in perfect condition. But one you start reading overtime, the spine of the book will get curved but that's okay. The only issue is the pages numbers on the right pages being weirdly printed backwards.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2014
    It is important to note that 1Q84 is not for the ill of heart. It has been compared to The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie and 1984 by George Orwell but this epic novel definitely stands on its own for its originality, depth of characters, and fluid writing style. A lengthy novel of over 1,100 pages, 1Q84 has two alternating storylines; one concerning Tengo Kawana, a cram school math teacher and the other concerning Aomame, a sports club physical trainer. Under different circumstances, they each fall into the new world of 1Q84 (aptly named by Aomame) instead of 1984, where there are two moons and a bestselling fantasy novel, Air Chrysalis, actually contains classified information about a highly religious organization, Sakigake. As each of them adjust into this new world and try to find one another after twenty years, dangerous obstacles stand in their way of them reaching their goals. With only a few trusted companions and their own inner strength, they have to survive long enough to hopefully discover a way back to the real world and have the storybook ending they so deeply desire.

    This novel took on so much in terms of storytelling and character development, but one of the best parts of 1Q84 is the combination of Murakami’s writing style and the translation of Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel. The words flowed so evenly, so much so that the reader may forget (as I did many times) that they are reading a translated novel. Because of this fluidity, it was so easy to become hypnotized by the events that took place and are swept away with the plot twists that keep the reader guessing until the very end. The other beautiful aspect of Murakami’s writing is the way that 1Q84 is a love story, but that fact is not in your face. I appreciated the way the he presented love with fate, and did not make it the focus of the story; it played an important part but you were not smothered by it.

    The length, which most readers seemed to have a problem with, is a bittersweet subject for me. I do not mind a long novel because the longer the novel is, the more opportunity the author has to test his characters in various scenarios to show their complexity and versatility. On the other hand, staying at a consistent pace to keep the reader’s attention is very important in such a novel, but unfortunately in 1Q84, in the last two hundred pages, the story line becomes slower and you have to push to finish it. Please do not think that the story becomes less interesting and that is a reason not to read this amazing novel! What I mean is 80% of the novel is so fast paced sometimes you forget to breathe. Slowly, everything slows down, and the new relaxed pace is a difficult adjustment to make after such a wild ride and especially since you are so close to the end.

    The ending is good, but not great. Throughout the entire novel, I could not figure out how everything would sort itself out but as the story started to relax and everything became more predictable, the ending (not a surprise) was conventional. Personally, I was hoping for something grandiose, but the fact that the ending is simple is not bad; it is merely personal preference.

    The biggest mistake Murakami makes in this novel, however, is not the length or the ending but the way he eliminates key characters as the story goes on, characters that are not given a follow-up after they have left the storyline and are never heard from again. If he would have given some background as to what happens to them once they leave the story, then the story may have continued to pick up some speed. Unfortunately, though, Murakami lets them fade into the wind, almost making the reader wonder if they had ever existed in the first place.

    Regardless of everything negative, Murakami's characters are what make 1Q84 a masterpiece. The characters have wonderfully well-rounded personalities and at times it is almost impossible to not make connections between your world and theirs, so much so that the readers may find themselves looking up at the sky and wondering if their moon has changed into the ones in the world of 1Q84.
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  • Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2011
    Upfront caveats:
    1. I did not know who Murakami was prior to selecting this book from Amazon's best of the month list and then reading of his oeuvre.
    2. Its surprising that I elected to read it after reading "about" it. My reading preferences trend toward densely detailed non-fiction (think Robert Caro and Doris Goodwin Kearns) or complex, intensely human and often "spiritual" fiction (think Dostoevsky or Marilyn Robinson). I do not generally enjoy science fiction or fantasy works.

    That said, and to my surprise, I really did enjoy this book. It is not a great "novel" and I am not sure it can even be characterized as a novel, unless its unique style results in a redefinition of the genre. What it is is a great story, thematically thin and deceptively simple in its telling, yet compelling in its hold on the reader. In fact, a better word than compelling would be "propelling". The short chapters made of short paragraphs, that alternate between the destined-to-intersect worlds of the two protagonists, and a third Colombo type investigator, move swiftly and purposefully carrying along the reader like a passenger on a steadily moving train on an express route free of stops or stations to pause or ponder along the way. It doesn't matter that its obvious from the very beginning that the story's denouement will be the union of the two detached and lonesome lovers. In this case, it's not the destination, it's the ride.

    I'll not dwell on the plot elements. If you've read the reviews you know they involve a detour into a parallel world where the main characters' lives are seemingly being controlled at first by human outside forces of cults and ideologies and then by seemingly super-natural ones evidenced by night time visits by Little People and a sky with two moons. Ultimately the story is a love story that involves two loners destined to be united, after, and by, surviving forces of apparent good and evil that turn out to be ambiguously neither. In that sense,it seems, their story is everyman's.

    Murakami is a great maker of moods. The first chapter had such a wonderfully mysterious quality to it that I was more than a little let down as the more mundane elements of Book One unfolded. I felt then that the book was a lot more "ordinary" than its beginning suggested. But as the story progressed, the air of mystery returned to color the seemingly more mundane events and ultimately to create a rich and sustained sense of other-worldliness.

    At times, the book seems to border on pulp fiction, particularly when describing the protagonists' kinky or casual sexual encounters and escapades. I suppose the point of these seemingly superfluous curiously unerotic episodes was to depict how actually loveless were the solitary lives of Tengo and Aomeme before their childhood memories of each other were reawakended from the past due to external forces in their newly shared "other" world. In that sense, I suppose, the sex was like exercise and eating, a necessary physical ritual in their respective work a days lives that was scheduled in on a regular basis, but really not anchored to anything permanent or fulfilling in the deliberately then "single" lives of Tengo and Aomeme.

    Aside from those odd interludes, and maybe even intending, for this purpose, to include them, the author magically mixes the mundane and the fantastic to create a surreal world where the most ordinary things intersect with supernatural ones in the course of single day or even a single paragraph.

    To me, Murakami (at least in this the only of his works I have read) is less a great novelist, and more a master of the craft of story telling. His style is quite simple, or more likely, his skill is his ability to make it appear simple. For a book of nearly 1000 pages, it was one of the most quickly reading books I've read in recent years. While I have read much criticism in these reviews of the level of repetition, I was not bothered by that. This is not a "subtle" or profound book, and the reader is not asked to ponder what came before and what that may mean in the context of what lies ahead. Its more like a tale you "listen" to on the edge of your bed or by the side of a burning fire (and I think the audio version would be mesmerizing), without stopping to consider its meaning and course and, in that context, the repetition of the facts you learned along the way actually help to create its uniquely propulsive reading quality- no need to stop and look at the map; the author's gps will remind you where you've been and in fact foretell what lies ahead.

    All you need to do is sit tight and enjoy the ride.
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  • Derek Tibbitts
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    My all-time favourite book.
  • Diana Carolina Godinez Rodriguez
    5.0 out of 5 stars La historia completa en un solo libro.
    Reviewed in Mexico on April 23, 2021
    Llego en excelentes condiciones, pero la sobreportada parece un poco maltratada, es de esperarse ya que está hecha de un papel tipo cebolla, muy delgado. Aún así no es anda del otro mundo. Es una edición excelente y aún muy buen precio, por los tres libros en uno.
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    Diana Carolina Godinez Rodriguez
    5.0 out of 5 stars La historia completa en un solo libro.
    Reviewed in Mexico on April 23, 2021
    Llego en excelentes condiciones, pero la sobreportada parece un poco maltratada, es de esperarse ya que está hecha de un papel tipo cebolla, muy delgado. Aún así no es anda del otro mundo. Es una edición excelente y aún muy buen precio, por los tres libros en uno.
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  • L Alksaris
    5.0 out of 5 stars just a review of the book and customer service. Have not read yet
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 9, 2021
    The physical book is very good. I wanted to get the slightly more expensive and nice looking version because it's very long and I don't want to spend that much time with an ugly book. This book is definitely not ugly. The cover is very good and the font is readable. Not to big or small. The book is also very floppy. I prefer books like this as it makes it easier to turn the pages and stops the spine from creasing. I knew that I would probably enjoy this book because I've read his other stuff and loved it. I would definitely recommend reading some of his other shorter books before committing to this one just to make sure that you like his writing. I've read the wind up bird chronicles, Norwegian wood and after dark and they were all great. I'm excited to read this one. His writing style feels so engaging and you make connections in your head. Murakami never holds your hand and leaves you to interpret things. This is really refreshing as lots of modern media tells you everything and treats you like your stupid.
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    L Alksaris
    5.0 out of 5 stars just a review of the book and customer service. Have not read yet
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 9, 2021
    The physical book is very good. I wanted to get the slightly more expensive and nice looking version because it's very long and I don't want to spend that much time with an ugly book. This book is definitely not ugly. The cover is very good and the font is readable. Not to big or small. The book is also very floppy. I prefer books like this as it makes it easier to turn the pages and stops the spine from creasing. I knew that I would probably enjoy this book because I've read his other stuff and loved it. I would definitely recommend reading some of his other shorter books before committing to this one just to make sure that you like his writing. I've read the wind up bird chronicles, Norwegian wood and after dark and they were all great. I'm excited to read this one. His writing style feels so engaging and you make connections in your head. Murakami never holds your hand and leaves you to interpret things. This is really refreshing as lots of modern media tells you everything and treats you like your stupid.
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  • io
    5.0 out of 5 stars Libro fantastico nella versione a volume unico
    Reviewed in Italy on December 8, 2019
    Il libro é semplicemente un capolavoro! Questa versione a copertina rigida e singolo volume la rende ottima da tenere nella propria collezione. Peccato solo per copertina superiore che é veramente molto sottile e va trattata con delicatezza per non rovinarla.
  • EONIP
    5.0 out of 5 stars A True Masterpiece
    Reviewed in India on February 16, 2019
    Thank you Amazon for providing the international Vintage Paperback Edition at such unbeatable price. The book was in excellent condition.
    Now for the literary part, it's hands down one of the best Murakami creation of Magical Realism. Tango,Aomame and Fuka Eri are interwoven so intricately in this novel with such daydreaming narrative is simply unputdownable.
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    EONIP
    5.0 out of 5 stars A True Masterpiece
    Reviewed in India on February 16, 2019
    Thank you Amazon for providing the international Vintage Paperback Edition at such unbeatable price. The book was in excellent condition.
    Now for the literary part, it's hands down one of the best Murakami creation of Magical Realism. Tango,Aomame and Fuka Eri are interwoven so intricately in this novel with such daydreaming narrative is simply unputdownable.
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