Buy new:

$21.99

FREE delivery on your first order.

Order now and we’ll notify you via email when we have an estimated delivery date for this item.

Only 2 left in stock (more on the way)

[{"displayPrice":"$21.99","priceAmount":21.99,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"21","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"99","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"atXwHngmu5zVopXksEz71QGsHdEQzgp4Cl%2FVYUx%2FDegF9JnoSpfhWr9N5iESPl9FiXO7hCDkr1g2FlybU4NDI7i3DE0eCpepv3a0Vc%2B3f4xz4nGnNKBrbCBXEjEL0nK%2BGn3DSy34BcE%3D","locale":"en-CA","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}]

$$21.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.ca

Sold by

Amazon.ca

Details

Ships from

Amazon.ca

Sold by

Amazon.ca

Return policy: Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Add gift options

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Follow the Authors

See all

Haruki Murakami

Jay Rubin

1Q84 MP3 CD – MP3 Audio, May 6 2014

by Haruki Murakami (Author), Alison Hiroto (Reader), Marc Vietor (Reader),

4.3 8,372 ratings

See all formats and editions

Amazon Price

New from

Used from

Kindle Edition

"Please retry"

$11.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$43.50

$22.45

Paperback

"Please retry"

$24.00

$19.99

MP3 CD, Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$21.99

—

Purchase options and add-ons

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 Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant bestseller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.

Language

English
Publisher

Brilliance Audio
Publication date

May 6 2014
Dimensions

13.34 x 1.52 x 17.15 cm
ISBN-10

1491518227
ISBN-13

978-1491518229
See all details

Haruki Murakami
16,878
Paperback
28 offers from $11.08
Haruki Murakami
6,477
Paperback
35 offers from $11.65
Haruki Murakami
210
Paperback
5 offers from $40.00
Haruki Murakami
9,079
Paperback
41 offers from $11.04
Haruki Murakami
4,834
Paperback
29 offers from $13.77
MURAKAMI HARUKI
1,651
Paperback
23 offers from $17.36

Product description

About the Author

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than forty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J.M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera, and V.S. Naipaul.

J. Philip Gabriel is Professor, Department Head, East Asian Studies Ph.D., at Cornell University, 1992.

His translation of Kuroi’s novel Life in the Cul-de-sac won the 2001 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the translation of Japanese Literature, and in 2006 he was awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, a book which was selected by The New York Times as one of the Ten Best Books of 2005. His most recent publications include a co- translation of Murakami’s short stories entitled Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, and translations of a book of essays by Murakami and the novel Real World by Kirino Natsuo. He is presently translating a novel by Yoshida Shuichi and researching the work of the novelist Miura Ayako.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Brilliance Audio; Unabridged edition (May 6 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1491518227
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1491518229
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 118 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.34 x 1.52 x 17.15 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #708,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #47,561 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.3 8,372 ratings

About the authors

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Haruki Murakami
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J. M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera, and V. S. Naipaul.
See more on the author's page
Philip Gabriel
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
See more on the author's page
Jay Rubin
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Jay Rubin (b. 1941) is an American academic, translator, and (as of 2015) novelist. He is best known for his translations of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. He has written about Murakami, the novelist Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), the short story writers Kunikida Doppo (1871-1908) and Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927), prewar Japanese literary censorship, Noh drama, and Japanese grammar. In May 2015 Chin Music Press published his novel THE SUN GODS, set in Seattle against the background of the incarceration of 120,000 U.S. citizens and non-citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II.
Rubin has a Ph.D. in Japanese literature from the University of Chicago. He taught at the University of Washington for eighteen years, and then moved to Harvard University, from which he retired in 2006. He lives near Seattle, where he continues to write and translate.
See more on the author's page

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

8,372 global ratings

5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star

How are ratings calculated?

Reviews with images

See all photos

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

SBuckle

4.5 stars: Murakami's epic

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 17, 2012

Verified Purchase

This will undoubtedly be Murakami's epic. Not only because it's a bear at almost 1000 pages, but because it's his best book. I thought his last piece of fiction, 'After Dark', was rushed and featured too many characters. This didnt allow his characters to develop like Murakami is known for.

The exact opposite is true of 1Q84. He focused on two main protagonists and let them simmer like a grand stew, slowly bringing out their flavors over time. His meticulous details help us understand who his characters are and how they live in the world. This can be trying at times like when something suspenseful is around the corner and Murakami is taking his time setting up the scene, but it's worth it in the end, because once you get there, the details are clear and you better live in the scene.

I do dock him points for introducing Ushikawa as a lead near the end of the book - it felt like a cop out and disrupted the flow a bit. I understand he needed Ushikawa's perspective to move along some plot elements, but Ushikawa was extremely interesting and could have lived throughout the whole book.

For Murakami fans, 1Q84 is a must. This is the one book that will represent Murakami as time passes.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

SLK

Excellent read.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 6, 2022

Verified Purchase

I can't say this is Murakami's best. It was a good and entertaining read, nevertheless.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Zoran

Not his best, very drawn out, too long, uneventful.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on December 15, 2022

Verified Purchase

By page 800 this book is an absolute grind, and in those first 800 pages, precious little happens. Though there is a style of prose and writing, that style quickly wears thin on this amount of length, and this serious lack of plot. "He woke up, broke up eggs, fried them, cooked vegetables, plated them, sat down, waited for the water to boil, blah blah blah blah blah". There are literally a hundred pages worth of absolute trite writing that lend nothing at all to the plot, to character development (outside of what has already been well established), and frankly, start to wear very thin. One wonders, was the point to simply increase the page count?
This book could easily have been condensed into half the size. I love lengthy volumes, but when that length is obtusely purposeless, it becomes a form of pulling the reader out of actual engagement.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Research Book!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 14, 2022

Verified Purchase

This was a good replacement for books damaged in a flood. It came as expected.

Helpful

Amazon Customer

One of Murakami's Best!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 10, 2020

Verified Purchase

1Q84 finds the master at his genre-defying best. Captivating and absorbing, Murakami once again shows that no one is better at creating both atmosphere and a distinct sense of place, even if it is usually a place that no one has ever been!

One person found this helpful

Helpful

lina alegria

LOVE

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on May 20, 2021

Verified Purchase

I bought this book through the used section and it came in great condition. could call it luck or just great promise on amazons part

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 16, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book is fantastic in all aspects! I recommend it 100%

Helpful

Michael Barr

An imaginative and captivating journey

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 31, 2018

Verified Purchase

I enjoyed immersing myself in this world and following the story as it played with reality. The story moves along at a pace that enables you to enjoy the details of the settings while getting to know the characters. It sort of feels like experiencing a dream.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Sharane

Amazon Singapore please take better care of books

Reviewed in Singapore 🇸🇬 on April 17, 2023

Verified Purchase

The pages of the book looks like a tsunami

Brian C.

Disappointing...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 1, 2013

Verified Purchase

I should say upfront that there are NO SPOILERS in this review. This is the first Murakami book I have ever tried to read, and, in hindsight, I do not think it was the best choice. I have since run into a number of amazon reviewers who say they love Murakami but thought this book was uncharacteristically bad. Personally, I was quite disappointed in the book. It is not my intention to dissuade anyone from reading it. At the time I am writing this review the five star reviews outweigh the one star reviews 199 to 89. So, statistically speaking you are apparently more likely to love the book than to hate it. Still, I think if you are new to Murakami, it might be worthwhile starting with one of his other, shorter, books. In the rest of my review I will explain the problems I had with this book and why, after 700+ pages, I finally decided to give up. I did not hate the book. The story was imaginative, and Murakami did a good job setting up some interesting mysteries, but, there were also some real problems with the book, in my opinion; problems that eventually outweighed my desire to keep reading to see how the story was resolved.

The main problem I had was with the characters. There were three interconnected problems here. First, Murakami's characters are too "rational", for lack of a better word. As human beings we all reflect on ourselves to some degree, and through self-reflection we tend to construct our own personal narratives about who we are and what motivates us, etc.. As Freud, and a whole host of psychoanalysts after Freud, have pointed out, however, those conscious narratives, or rationalizations, tend to be very superficial. They do not really get at who we really are. This is not an insight that is unique to Freud. In fact, novelists recognized this fact long before Freud, and good novelists find a way to get below the surface of their characters. Murakami seemed to me to take everything that his characters thought about themselves, and their own personal histories, at face value. He never digs deeply into their psyches, their hidden motivations, etc.. We never hear the unconscious rumbling beneath their speech or in their actions. We are never presented with actions that appear unintelligible. If we were to walk up to someone we had never met and ask "So, what are you like?" the person would almost certainly be able to give us an answer, but it is probably not going to be a very deep or interesting answer. Murakami never, in my opinion, gets much beyond that with his characters, but that is what novelists are supposed to do. They are supposed to get below the level of conscious rationalization.

That problem is connected to the second problem I had with Murakami's characters. Good novelists do not tell you what their characters are like, they show you. Murakami tends to reveal his characters through dialogue; he has one character tell another character about their history, and that is how the reader learns about them. I do not think that is the best method for creating full blooded characters. This is sort of a difficult point to describe so I am going to illustrate it with a comparison. If you (whoever is reading this) have ever read The Sound and the Fury (Norton Critical Editions) by William Faulkner, I want you think of the Jason section. Jason is a very interesting and unlikable character. The reader can tell almost immediately that Jason is full of rage and despair and he takes it out on everyone around him. Faulkner never, as far as I can remember, has Jason say to another character "I am just so mad that Caddy left, and that I did not get the attention I deserved, I am so full of rage and despair, that I just take it out on everyone around me." Faulkner just SHOWS us all of that, without having Jason SAY any of it. In fact, it is clear that Jason is not even conscious of his own rage and despair, or the causes for his rage and despair. That is why Jason feels like a full blooded and real character. The reader feels like they know more about Jason than is actually revealed on the page. The reader feels like they have actually met Jason and they feel like they have access to Jason's inexhaustible reality. Murakami fails, in my opinion, to do the same thing with his characters. We never learn more about his characters than what they know and, for that reason, they feel superficial and shallow.

The third problem is, again, related to the first two. All of Murakami's characters tend to speak in the same voice. I will give another comparison to explain what I mean. I recently read the novel A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick. There is a character in that book named Barris. I am not going to describe in detail what he was like, suffice it to say that he was a very interesting character, he had a very distinctive manner of speech. After I read the book, I decided to watch the movie adaptation of the book. I had no idea which actors played which parts, but as soon as Robert Downey, jr. began to speak I knew immediately "That is Barris!" The reason I knew is because Philip K. Dick succeeded in giving all of his characters a unique voice (especially Barris), so I could tell just from his manner of speech who he was. Murakami's characters, on the other hand, do not seem to me to each have their own unique voice. They all tend to speak in the same voice which, I think, is probably Murakami's own voice. I think this problem is intimately connected to the first two problems. Murakami's characters are too "rational", and we all tend to speak in the same voice when we are being rational.

Another problem I had with the book is that Murakami spends a great deal of time describing mundane details like: what people are wearing, what people are eating, etc.. Now there is nothing necessarily wrong with describing mundane details. One of my favorite passages in all of literature is a passage from Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse where one of the characters is simply washing dishes listening to the ocean, and listening to the voices of the other characters out on the lawn. Virginia Woolf was a master at capturing the beauty in the mundane. Also, sometimes minor details about what people are wearing can reveal a great deal about their character. Murakami's descriptions of minor details almost always felt like filler to me. I do not feel, for example, like Murakami's descriptions of Tengo cooking dinner really revealed anything interesting about his character, nor did his descriptions succeed in capturing the beauty of the mundane. It felt like he was just trying to fill space. A little of that is, perhaps, excusable, but I think that if you are going to ask readers to read a 1000+ page book, I do not think that such a high percentage of it should be filler.

A fourth problem I had is, I just did not feel like Murakami's writing was very interesting. Of course the book was translated, so it is hard to say how much of that is Murakami's fault, and how much the translators fault. I doubt that all the blame, or even most of it, can be attributed to the translation. All I can say is, there were very few times in the book where I felt like Murakami's writing was genuinely beautiful. Most of the time I felt like the writing was just conveying information in a very transparent way. Good writing is supposed to disorganize our ordinary ways of speaking, and use language in new and interesting ways, to make our ordinary language yield "strange sounds", in the words of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (one of my favorite philosophers). Great writing introduces the reader into a new world, where words are free, to some degree, from their standard, transparent significations. That is what we mean by "style". I did not feel any of that in Murakami's book.

I have one last criticism to make before I bring this overly long review to a close. I felt like many of Murakami's "ideas" were superficial. Now, I have to admit, I am a philosophy graduate student, so I tend to like novels that have some philosophical substance. In my opinion, it is impossible to be a really great novelist if you do not have anything interesting to say (about human nature, the meaning of life, etc.). If the "ideas" behind a book are superficial, I do not think that any degree of skill or technique is going to be able to compensate for that. You need to have something interesting to say. Now, in fairness to Murakami, I have browsed through the positive reviews here, and it is clear to me that some readers are getting some interesting ideas out of this book. For whatever reason, they were passing me by. I was not getting anything of interest out of this book. Perhaps, for whatever reason, I have a blind spot when it comes to Murakami. Perhaps his ideas were just failing to connect with me. We all have blind spots. So I am willing to give Murakami the benefit of the doubt to some degree. But there were clearly places in the book where I felt like Murakami had his characters present really superficial and uninteresting ideas as if they were profound and original.

I will just give one example so the reader will know what I mean. On page 550 Murakami has a character develop a theory of religion. Basically the theory, in a nutshell, is "People like to believe things that make them feel good, so they invent stories that make them feel good and then treat them as true". Now, it does not bother me that Murakami is having his character attack religion. I am not a religious apologist. The problem I have is that this is a really common place and superficial view of religion. Murakami has his character present it, however, as if it were a profound truth. Murakami also has the character over explain it, in my opinion. The idea is simple. Anyone who hears it can grasp it immediately, but Aomame, who we believe to be an intelligent character, seems to show signs that she is having trouble grasping the idea, so the character she is talking with over explains it. I do not know if people reading this have had this kind of experience, but it is always somewhat annoying to me when someone over explains a really simple idea. It feels like they are talking down to you, and I always want to say "Yeah, I get it! It is not that complicated!" Maybe I am just a jerk, but reading that section of Murakami gave me the same feeling. Also, the theory is almost certainly false. That theory of religion might apply to many modern day believers, but early religion was not at all comforting. Early "primitive" religion was based on the placation of ghosts and other evil beings. If religion is just a matter of believing what makes us feel good then why would anyone invent and then choose to believe in evil beings that need to be constantly placated and feared? The answer is, early religion was never about "belief", and the notion that people can consciously choose to "believe" in God or not is a very modern notion. Gods, and demons, were experienced before they were "believed". People were possessed by gods before they believed in them (I am not saying that the gods are literally real; I am just critiquing the notion that religion has its origin in a conscious decision to "believe" or the conscious invention of comforting stories) Anyone interested in that idea should take a look at Politics of Experience by R.D. Laing. Laing was a psychologist, and the book is primarily about the experiences of psychotics and schizophrenics, as well as the collective insanity of modern society, but Laing makes the valid point that religion was not originally a matter of "belief". That is a modern notion which, in Laing's view, is based on our modern, alienated forms of experience.

Okay, I have gotten somewhat off topic. Whether that character's "theory" about religion is true or not is neither here nor there. The point is: it is common place. I do not know how other people feel but when I read a book I like to encounter ideas I have never encountered before. If I read a book and it does not change the way I think about the world in some way I feel like I have wasted my time. I do not feel like Murakami changed the way I look at the world in anyway. That is probably the main reason I eventually gave up on the book. But, who knows. Maybe you will feel differently. Chances are you will...

11 people found this helpful

Brian K. Miller

Far more nihilistic and narcissistic than his earlier books

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 16, 2013

Verified Purchase

George Orwell's "1984" is a novel of socialism gone extreme where life itself has no meaning because meaning is a commodity controlled by government propaganda. Haruki Murakami's "1Q84", on the other hand, is a novel of isolation in the midst of Tokyo's crowded city streets where the meaning of life is derived from the internal landscape of each character, a meaning they then force upon one another through their actions, and sometimes inaction, in the shared fictional reality of their parallel worlds. "1Q84" is a dark, nightmarish expansion on the same counter-culturalism behind "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World". It is no mere coincidence that the central metaphor in both books is eschatology.

In line with this, it is surprising how many reviewers have stumbled over Murakami's use of "The Little People" as a kind of shadowy, gothic villain. Murakami's "Little People" represent normal, everyday people driven by cruel necessity to manipulate their world in ways that help them survive. George Orwell's "Big Brother" is government gone astray while Murakami's almost elvish "Little People" are stand-ins for the faceless, nameless, hardworking masses driven to madness by the deprivations of social and cultural forces they cannot control and do not understand. This passage on page 236, for example, is one almost every reviewer quotes in whole or in part because it is here that Murakami himself (speaking through the character of Professor Ebisuno) explains the relationship between the two books, "George Orwell introduced the dictator Big Brother in his novel 1984, as I'm sure you know. The book was an allegorical treatment of Stalinism, of course. And ever since then, the term 'Big Brother' has functioned as a social icon. That was Orwell's great accomplishment. But now, in the real year 1984, Big Brother is all too famous, and all too obvious. If Big Brother were to appear before us now, we'd point to him and say, 'Watch out! He's Big Brother!' There's no longer any place for a Big Brother in this real world of ours. Instead, these co-called Little People have come on the scene. Interesting verbal contrast, don't you think?"

On the surface, "1Q84" is a surreal love story of two people, Tengo and Aomame. Tengo is the grown son of a dedicated NHK subscription collector while Aomame is the grown daughter of a woman wholly and completely dedicated to the "Society of Witnesses". The adult Tengo teaches mathematics in a cram school for his daily bread while dreaming of being a novelist. For her day-job Aomame works as a martial arts instructor/physical therapist and spends her nights killing abusive husbands whose wives have fled their homes and are now under the care of a wealthy dowager. As adults the two do not know one another, but they went to the same elementary and middle schools. Because of their parents, in school both children were social outcasts whose paths became linked when Tengo intervened one day to stop Aomame from being bullied. Shy and reserved, that one rescue made them aware of one another but they never actually interacted until after cleaning the classroom one day when Aomame grabbed Tengo's hands, stared deep into his eyes, and then ran from the classroom in embarrassment. That event also marked the point when each child broke from the oppressive rule of their parents which in turn meant their paths would never cross again.

That, however, is only the surface. The real story runs much deeper.

Haruki Murakami was born in 1949, putting him firmly in the middle of the post-World War Two baby boom generation. Just like his American and European counterparts, for Murakami the core assumption has always been that the primary purpose of their generation was to redefine the world and through that redefinition to bring about a unified global culture. Unfortunately, like so many of his generation, Murakami cannot conceptualize a clear distinction between individualism and collectivism except for the simplistic understanding that individualism is rebellion against "the system". This dichotomy, this paradox, is what has driven Murakami's entire generation into embracing the single greatest collectivist social movement in the history of our world. The dark side of Murakami, the "shadows" he tried to cut in "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" and having cut now seeks to explore in "1Q84" are nothing less than his generation's horrifying realization that they have failed to bring our world into the utopia of their dreams and through that failure, they have created an "end of the world" just as destructive of human potential as the global thermonuclear war nightmare they inherited from their parents.

The destruction that so horrifies the baby boom generation is their perception of society being a fatal poison inflicted on their generation's human spirit. They have spent their entire lives seeking out that one narcotic, that one perfect sexual position, that one mystical piece of music, the one perfect sensual experience which will carry them away from the pain, guilt, and privilege of their lives and into a spiritual awakening capable of carrying them to the threshold of utopia. Consider, for example, this passage on page 242 where Aomame is contemplating the existential consequences of rape versus her own rape-free childhood, "But decent motives don't always produce decent results. And the body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood."

What the baby boom generation and its quest for enlightenment has failed to realize is that their own narcissism and self-absorbtion is, in fact, the chief cause of the psychic damage that so horrifies them. Tengo's father was trapped in an endless parade of Sundays spent going house-to-house seeking out radio and television owners who had not paid the required fees for NHK broadcasts. Aomame's mother had likewise dragged her through a childhood of identical Sundays only instead of service to NHK's quasi-governmental bureaucracy, Aomame's mother was a sincere follower of the "Society of Witnesses" seeking to warn a dying world of impending divine judgment. Now, as adults, just like their parents were trapped in lives of daily toil so are Tengo and Aomame. Their upbringing coupled with their devotion to not following in their parent's footsteps alongside their dedication to living life in accordance with their own internal reality, has trapped them in orbit around one another where they are constantly circling and never fulfilling the passion that has grown between them. The real question of the "Q" in "1Q84" is not the identity of the Little People, the coming of the end of the world, or the success of the book-within-a-book titled "Air Chrysalis". The real question behind the "Q" is what is stopping Aomame and Tengo from being together? The answer, of course, is their own refusal to seek each out.

The Little People themselves finally make an appearance on page 249 emerging in the light of the alternate world's two moons from the mouth of a pedophile victim who Aomame's dowager friend has taken under her protective wing. The child is a girl found bruised and beaten in a train station after fleeing from Sakigake, a cult that up to now, has been pictured as mostly harmless but with odd, evil overtones. Fuka-Eri, the writer of the book "Air Chrysalis" that Tengo rewrote in order to insure it would win a contest, is the daughter of Professor Ebisuno's friends, the Fukuda family. The Professor has not been able to contact her parents in several years. He fears they are imprisoned within the cult compound after having been supplanted by someone as religiously radical as his friends were politically radical. The appearance of this girl (named Tsubasa) here late in the first book as a victim of violent, vicious rape at the hands of an unidentified messianic new Sakigake leader, takes us a step closer to discovering what great trauma Fuka-Eri endured right before she fled the cult and her parents vanished. To have the Little People make their first appearance from the mouth of this victim is grotesquely ironic, moving Murakami ever closer to tradition of writers like Tanizaki Junichiro, a tradition Murakami early in his writing career was dedicated to breaking away from.

He doesn't stop there, of course, he builds further by having the Little People engage in their signature activity, building an air chrysalis, "Then they sat in a circle around the object and started feverishly working on it. It was white and highly elastic. They would stretch their arms out and, with practiced movements, pluck white, translucent threads out of the air, applying them to the fluffy, white object, making it bigger and bigger."

A few pages later (page 251), Murakami uses similar language to describe Tengo as he works on an original story he hopes to publish, "Writing at night for the first time in ages, though, using a ballpoint pen and paper, Tengo found his mind working smoothly. His imagination stretched out its limbs and the story flowed freely. One idea would link naturally with the next almost without interruption, the tip of the pen raising a persistent scrape against the white paper. Whenever his hand tired, he would set the pen down and move the fingers of his right hand in the air, like a pianist doing imaginary scales."

This kind of parallel language in two scenes only a few pages apart occurs frequently throughout the story. By invoking similar metaphors in this way Murakami is using one storyline to expand the depth and breadth of the other. In this particular case, he is intentionally creating a sense of magic in both the creation of the air chrysalis and the writing of Tengo's new story. This congruence also builds on one of the underlying principle themes running throughout the story, a theme that is common in almost everything Murakami writes because it is key to the worldview of his entire generation. Taking their clues from Vonnegut and Kerouac, the baby boom generation accepts as an almost divine truth the Aristotelian ideal of the sacredness of all forms of art and creative venture. The plain, simple life of Tengo's hardworking NHK fee collecting father is not for them. This generation as a whole has long assumed that they are more evolved than their parents. Being more evolved also means they feel more entitled to live better and enjoy greater wealth without the backbreaking, knuckle busting, sweaty labor of their parents.

One of the thinly veiled condescensions running throughout "1Q84" and so many other literary works written by baby boomers is disdain for anyone who dares to criticize their artistry or their way of life. And yet, at the same time, like Tengo and Aomame, they have nothing but disdain for the way of life embodied in their hardworking, industrious parents. Earlier writers (such as Soseki in Japan and Fitzgerald in America) felt that same sense of personal evolution but they did not treat honest work as something too far beneath their station to even consider. Just the opposite, in fact. In both Soseki and Fitzgerald hard, honest work was both a means to an end and an important aspect of a character's moral development. But not here. No, in "1Q84" honest work serves merely as a cover for the far more important tasks of Tengo's fiction writing and Aomame's assassination of abusive husbands. So it is not surprising in the least when on page 252, Tengo has this thought, "The concept of duty always made Tengo cringe. He had lived his life thus far skillfully avoiding any position that entailed responsibility, and to do so, he was prepared to endure most forms of deprivation."

In the end, "1Q84" becomes something I had hoped to never see Murakami attach his name to, an existential exercise in nihilism, a form of literary masturbation. I stopped reading Murakami when he came out with "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" because when I skimmed through that book in either English or Japanese (at the time my Japanese was much better than it is now!) I could see right away that a profound change had occurred in Murakami's approach to writing. Where "A Wild Sheep Chase" and "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" had been playful, metaphorical flights of fantasy, "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" was dull, dreary, and about as entertaining as watching a dog chase its own tail. "1Q84" has much in common with "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World". Both books are explorations in the schizophrenic nature of life in the modern world, both books are dark treatises on the failure of the modern world to live up to the baby boomer's utopian ideals, and both books carry the writer's own fear of death into a metaphorical and nightmarish exploration of eschatology. However, "1Q84" feels less like a brilliant, visual mind playing with ideas and more like a dark, brooding condemnation of life itself. For all his obvious hatred of the "Society of Witnesses", in "1Q84" Murakami reveals that he and they share a common philosophy: life is cruel and the reason it is cruel is because the human race is mostly composed of self-destructive idiots.

6 people found this helpful

Gilmore

An Unveiling of the Japanese Worldview

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 20, 2012

Verified Purchase

This review recently appeared on nipponinitiative.org.

I first heard of 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami while listening one day to NPR. The person mentioning the book said something like, "If you want to know more about how Japanese people think, 1Q84 is a must-read." So I ordered the book and began to read it, all 925 pages of it. That's right--925 pages. Other than the Bible, it is the longest book I've ever read. Even the New York Times lamented the length of 1Q84, noting "Mr. Murakami's determination to describe, inventory and echo just about everything that he chooses to mention."

Fair enough, but the question remains: Does 1Q84 deliver with insights into the mind of Japanese people? If so, what exactly does it say about their worldview?

1Q84 is the story of two people, Aomame and Tengo, separated during childhood but reunited as young adults drawn into a world heavily under the influence of powerful "Little People." In the world of 1Q84, Little People, who magically enter the world through the mouth of a dead goat, control weather and other natural phenomena. They manipulate both circumstances and people, expressing anger, issuing warnings, turning some into their agents--all this without the benefit of omnipotence or moral anchors. "We do not know if the so-called Little People are good or evil, " someone remarks. "But the important thing is that, whether they are good or evil, light or shadow, whenever they begin to exert their power, a compensatory force comes into being."

If 1Q84 reveals the worldview of modern Japanese, this exchange shows how central of a role Shinto continues to play in hearts and minds throughout the land of the Rising Sun, in spite of so many now claiming to have turned away from religion toward more urban ways of thinking. Shinto, also known as "kami no michi" (the way of kami), embraces the existence of divine forces that, like "Little People," are neither good nor evil, moral nor immoral: "kami are manifold; some kami are noble, while others are lowly, some are strong, whereas others are weak; again, some kami are good, while others are evil."1 Once again, kami are like "Little People," everywhere and potentially in everything, including humans.

As in the world of 1Q84, which drew in Aomame and Tengo, the world wherein kami exist is unpredictable and dangerous. It is a world wherein the rules of ethics and morality may not apply. Instead, right thinking and right action are determined by "somatically enacted feelings"2; in other words, by conforming body and attitudes to the way things are and then acting accordingly. Such a world provides no absolute moral or physical safe harbor.

In 1Q84, the lives of Aomame and Tengo illustrate fear, hopelessness, despair, and a desire to escape from reality. If Murakami's portrayal accurately illustrates the worldview of modern Japanese with all of its vestiges of Shinto, then his work also stands as a call for answers that will truly serve the deepest needs of the hearts of his dear countrymen. At the Nippon Initiative, of course, we believe the worldview of biblical Christianity offers real and meaningful solutions to the world of Shinto and 1Q84. Strangely enough, Murakami himself opens that door as the story of 1Q84 unfolds. More about this in Part 2 of this review.

PART 2: The world of 1Q84 proves to be dangerous and unpredictable, a world that lends itself to fear, hopelessness, and despair. It is no wonder that author Haruki Murakami portrays the main characters of 1Q84, Aomame and Tengo, as driven to escape the uncertainty and threat it poses to them. Early in the 925-page tome, Tengo explains how he often retreated to mathematics, a realm of "infinite consistency," in order to "escape from the troublesome cage of reality." To Tengo:

The world governed by numerical expression was, for him, a legitimate and always safe hiding place. As long as he stayed in that world, he could forget or ignore the rules and burdens forced upon him by the real world.

However, over time, Tengo discovered just as much dissatisfaction with the world of mathematics as he had experienced with the "burdens" of the real world: "In elementary and middle school, Tengo was utterly absorbed by the world of mathematics. Its clarity and absolute freedom enthralled him, and he also needed them to survive. Once he entered adolescence, however, he began to feel increasingly that this might not be enough. There was no problem as long as he was visiting the world of math, but when he returned to the real world (as return he must), he found himself in the same miserable cage. Nothing had improved. Rather, his shackles felt even heavier. So then, what good was mathematics? Wasn't it just a temporary means of escape that made his real-life situation even worse?"

In these lines, Murakami puts his finger on a dilemma faced by so many Japanese people. On one hand, there appears to be such an attraction in the hearts and minds of Japanese people to order and predictability. These are the things that preserve harmony in a world that otherwise has so much potential for chaos. On the other hand, the chaos inherent in the Shinto and Buddhist worldviews stubbornly persists without any real solution. It is like a pair of shackles on the soul that, as Tengo indicated, "feel even heavier" when he returned to the real world.

So how does Tengo deal with this dilemma? He escapes to the world of story:"The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. Depending on the nature and direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that suggestion in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. At times it lacked coherence and served no immediate practical purpose. But it would contain a possibility. Somehow he might be able to decipher the spell. That possibility would gently warm his heart from within."

In other words, Tengo decided that if there were going to be any solution to the shackles on his soul, it would have to be found in some alternative way of understanding how and why the world works the way that it does, along with what place he personally has in it.

In Part 3 of this review, we will look at one of the alternatives--the worldview of biblical Christianity in contrast with the worldview of 1Q84. We will see once again that Murakami's novel opens the door to the possibility of a biblical worldview, coming closer to laying a foundation for its narrative than the author may have ever imagined.

PART 3: The storyline of 1Q84 centers on the main characters being drawn into another realm of existence. It is a realm dominated by "Little People", kami-like beings full of mystery and mischief, and therefore unpredictable and dangerous. As it turns out, life in 1Q84, for Aomame and Tengo (and several other characters besides) proves to be utterly unattractive, offering no relief for the shackles Tengo felt on his soul, as described in Part 2 of this review.

Author Haruki Murakami's storyline taps into a view of reality similar to one found in biblical Christianity. Like 1Q84, the Christian worldview also asserts the existence of a realm that intersects and interacts with the ordinary realm in which we live. Only instead of being ruled by "Little People", the parallel realm of the Christian worldview is under the rule of the living, Creator God, an eternal King over all. In the New Testament book of Matthew, Jesus refers to this realm as "the kingdom of the heavens."

One of the many differences between the operation of the realm of 1Q84 and the kingdom of the heavens is this: in 1Q84, Aomame and Tengo leave this realm to enter into the realm of the Little People; in the biblical account, the kingdom of the heavens penetrates into this realm. In other words, no one leaves this world to encounter the kingdom of the heavens; the kingdom of the heavens comes to us.

Another difference involves the matters of danger and despair. Unlike the world of 1Q84, encounters with the kingdom of the heavens are encounters with blessing, divine reversals of misfortune, and life to the full. All of these, by the way, are promised by Jesus Christ to those who interact with the kingdom of the heavens through him by faith in hm. This is not to say that the biblical worldview offers "escape" from the dangers and daily grind of the physical world. Instead it offers the other-world power and resources of the kingdom of the heavens to cope with life in this realm. It also offers meaning to explain the existence of evil and suffering and make them more bearable. You might say, in its penetration into this realm, the kingdom of the heavens offers sustaining hope and help for people whose lives are racked with weakness, pain, and loss.

One summary of how this works can be found in Matthew 5:1-12, Bible verses otherwise known as The Beatitudes. For example, Matthew 5:5 says: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Meekness would not ordinarily be valued in a world that is as competitive and power-hungry as ours. However, the words of Matthew 5:5 indicate that, in the operation of the kingdom of the heavens here on earth, meekness, not power-mongering, is the path to blessing.

In 1Q84, Tengo and Aomame become obsessed with escaping the realm in which they find themselves and each other. They return in the end to the ordinary realm from which they came, where the deep longings of their hearts will continue to go unmet. By contrast, in the biblical Christian worldview, whenever people live in proper relation to the kingdom of the heavens through faith in Jesus Christ, life in this world not only becomes bearable; it becomes abundantly meaningful and satisfying.

For more on what it means to live in proper relation to the kingdom of the heavens through faith in Jesus Christ, go to nipponinitiative.org. You will find a link to email us at the end of part 3 of the review.

1 Robert S. Gall in "Kami and Daim'n: A Cross-cultural Reflection of what is divine," p. 64.
2 Ibid, p. 67.

6 people found this helpful

ikirkwood62

"Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route."

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 21, 2012

Verified Purchase

When sitting down to begin reviewing this novel, many conflicting opinions and ideas have flown through my mind. On a technical 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 detached. If we were going off of that purely basic merit, I'd probably give this book 3 stars, maybe 3 and 1/2 because I consider myself a Murakami fan. But, in the end, I cannot do that, because, against all odds, the whole of this novel is much greater than the sum of its parts.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami is about two people living in Tokyo, 1984. Aomame is a powerful, liberated woman who delivers justice in her own vigilante style. The other, a reticent genius named Tengo Kawana, is involved in a controversial behind-closed-doors deal to ghost write a novel. These plots seem to be totally unrelated, but over the course of the year 1984, Tengo and Aomame's paths cross, and maybe not just for the first time.

When you read that summary, however, worry probably comes to your mind. The first seems decently interesting, but doesn't the second one come off as kind of... I don't know, bookish and academic? Unfortunately, yes. And, to be honest, Tengo's story line is probably the backbone of the novel: most of the mysteries stem from that one and a lot of the action occurs involving it. Often times, over the course of the novels 3 long "Books", or sections, the plot seems to drag as the narrative jumps through time to describe even the most minute details. The pace can be deadly.

However, as fatal as it feels while reading it, looking back from the end of the novel, the slow movement sort of makes sense. Murakami deftly covers all the small, seemingly unimportant things the exact same way he covers the monumental, the magical, and the life changing. The narratorial voice is definitely detached throughout the novel, but it needs to be that way to present some of the more fantastical and surreal elements in such a wholly realistic way. The presentation of these elements is so powerful that it will have you searching the world around you for evidence of its existence. Beautiful.

The Translation, however, can be quite *wonky*. I don't know how else to describe it. The book was translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel. Jay Rubin has translated a surplus of Murakami's other work, so I'm inclined to believe that it was Mr. Gabriel who dropped the ball a bit. Nothing major, it's just that here and there, sentences get awkward and often fall into the classic "Subject-Verb-Object" style of sentence. This isn't gramatically incorrect or unclear, however, it does make the dialogue sound stilted and the descriptions to sometimes be overblown and almost campy or mock-literary.

A note to potential readers: this book is explicit. When I say "explicit", I mean it heavily feautres rape, incest, gratuitous sex, lots of description of genitalia, violence, some mild drug use, and, of course, some language. Wow. That's a long list! But, as a 17 year old male, I'm not too too offended by the inclusion of this. In fact, some scenes had me smiling at the outright gall of Murakami to include what he did in this book, and not only throw it in for the purpose of being racy, or to just develop a theme, but to actually create and strengthen a plot thread. Murakami is one of the only authors I've read that can marry despicable violence with the commonplace beauty of butterflies and kind words.

This is a monstrous novel. The first edition, hardcover copy (which I assume most people will be reading until the three-book paperback box set comes out-- which I will be purchasing) is 925 pages long. In my opinion, this story could have been told in 100-200 pages less. During the first "Book", the length really bugged me. But at a certain point during Book 2, right after one of the most climatic and intense scenes in Murakami's opera, I kind of just settled into the story and let it take me where I wanted to go. Patterns emerge, irony and parallelism surface, and everything falls to the beat of the drum. ("Ho, Ho" as the Little People say.)

One final thing that I find particularly extra-ordinary about this book is that it not only confused the heck out of me, but then it proceeded to clarify things and generally increase the range of my thought process. This is very deep, philosophical, mind-expanding stuff-- if you let it be. Once you get yourself into this book, truly fold yourself between its sentences and wrap yourself in the blanket of the plot, the deep stuff starts coming to you and you'll be wondering about Cat Towns, Little People, Two Moons, Cults, and everything else in this novel.

But at 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 world (errr-- well, the modern world of 1984, but its close enough!). The Theme is vast and expansive, but there is something for everyone to relate to here.

In conclusion, I would like to share with you an episode form my life. I have a friend who is also my age and loves to read, and we often discuss modern literature. She, a huge Victorian fan, feels that it's kind of going downhill. I tend to be more modern in my tastes, but for a while, I understood what she was saying. However, 1Q84 has actually started to change my mind on the subject. Murakmi has such a powerful sense of interlinking and parallellism, ironic situations, metaphors, and over-arching allegories.

Let yourself get lost in this novel. If you hate it, I'm truly sorry. But try not to focus on the bad stuff... the technical level failures-- anyone can screw those up. Instead, I encourage you to get excited 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 as a whole. Murakami for the Nobel Prize! Woooo! (okay, I'm getting a little ahead of myself here.)

Like I said earlier: If I was basing this off of the little things in the book, this review would be about 3 stars. But, my personal response to this book has been amazingly positive. Halfway through it, I went out and bought a second copy so I could keep it nice on my shelf for years to come. It's that kind of book-- lasting. And because 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 worse, I couldn't give this book anything but 5 Stars.

A lot of people will dislike this book, but that's okay. Because those who do like it, will like it a lot. Just for the chance to like something as much as I enjoy this novel, I encourage you to try this book. You won't regret it.

39 people found this helpful

See all reviews

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	Amazon Advertising Find, attract and engage customers	Amazon Business Everything for your business	Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services

Book Depository Books With Free Delivery Worldwide	Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities	Amazon Photos Unlimited Photo Storage Free With Prime	Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands

Warehouse Deals Open-Box Discounts	Whole Foods Market We Believe in Real Food	Amazon Renewed Like-new products you can trust	Blink Smart Security for Every Home

Buy new: $21.99

Follow the Authors

1Q84 MP3 CD – MP3 Audio, May 6 2014

Purchase options and add-ons

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Product description

About the Author

Product details

About the authors

Haruki Murakami

Philip Gabriel

Jay Rubin

Customer reviews

Reviews with images

Top reviews from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$21.99