Haruki Murakami. Knopf, $30 (928p) ISBN 978-0-307-59331-3
The massive new novel from international sensation Murakami (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running) sold out in his native Japan, where it was released in three volumes, and is bound to provoke a similar reaction in America, where rabid fans are unlikely to be deterred by its near thousand-page bulk. Nor should they be; 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. Aomame is a beautiful assassin working exclusively for a wealthy dowager who targets abusive men. Meanwhile Tengo, an unpublished writer and mathematics instructor at a cram school, accepts an offer to write a novel called Air Chrysalis based on a competition entry written by an enigmatic 17-year-old named Fuka-Eri. Fuka-Eri proves to be dangerously connected to the infamous Sakigake cult, whose agents are engaged in a bloody game of cat-and-mouse with Aomame. Even stranger is that two moons have appeared over Tokyo, the dawning of a parallel time line known as 1Q84 controlled by the all-powerful Little People. The condensing of three volumes into a single tome makes for some careless repetition, and casual readers may feel that what actually occurs doesn’t warrant such length. But 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. (Oct.)
Amazingly long, incredibly pricey, wildly experimental, often confusing but never boring, Murakami's most famous novel has been brought to audio life with extreme dedication: by Naxos, a Continue reading »
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Murakami's 12th work of fiction is darkly entertaining and more novella than novel. Taking place over seven hours of a Tokyo night, it intercuts three loosely related stories, linked by Continue reading »
In this impressive sequel to A Wild Sheep Chase , Murakami displays his talent to brilliant effect. The unnamed narrator, a muddled freelance writer, is 34 and no closer to finding happiness than he Continue reading »
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Haruki Murakami
Murakami’s (1Q84) latest novel, which sold more than a million copies during its first week on sale in Japan, is a return to the mood and subject matter of the acclaimed writer’s earlier Continue reading »
These chats between novelist Murakami and Ozawa, former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, contain intriguing insights about the nature of music. Over a two-year period (2010–2011), Murakami Continue reading »
In a complete stylistic departure from his mysterious and surreal novels (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; A Wild Sheep Chase) that show the influences of Salinger, Fitzgerald and Tom Robbins, Murakami Continue reading »
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UNDERGROUND: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
Haruki Murakami
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For Murakami’s novel—a portrait of love in modern-day Japan—narrator Adam Sims delivers a straightforward but layered performance that manages to capture the essence of the book’s protagonist, a Continue reading »
A popular Japanese novelist who lives in New Jersey but sets his fictions in Japan, Murakami ( A Wild Sheep Chase ) invests everyday events with surreal overtones to create 17 disturbing existential Continue reading »
Lost loves and passionate mistakes haunt the successful but aimless man who tells his life story in this oddly gripping, often dreamlike tale. Growing up in the suburbs of post-WWII Japan, where Continue reading »
Murakami's latest is a nonfiction work mostly concerned with his thoughts on the long-distance running he has engaged in for much of his adult life. Through a mix of adapted diary entries, Continue reading »
This volume collects the first two novels, written in 1978 and never before published in the U.S., by internationally acclaimed Japanese author Murakami. Hear the Wind Sing is a touching and Continue reading »
There ought to be a name for the genre Murakami ( A Wild Sheep Chase ) has invented, and it might be the literary pyrotechno-thriller. The plot here is so elaborate that about 100 pages, one-fourth Continue reading »
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Thuận, in her English-language debut, delivers a powerful examination of a woman’s remembering and forgetting. In 2004, an unnamed Vietnamese woman and her son are stuck on a Continue reading »
Stott follows up the memoir In the Days of Rain with an impressive narrative set in the aftermath of the Roman Empire. By 500 CE, the Romans have abandoned Britain, their city Continue reading »
Jin (Little Gods) returns with a provocative magical realist collection in which women fall in love, grieve, and figure out what to make of their lives amid constant changes. Continue reading »