NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠āA tremendous accomplishment. It does every last blessed thing a masterpiece is supposed toāand a few things we never even knew to expect.āāSan Francisco Chronicle
āBrilliant . . . an irresistibly engaging literary fantasy.āāThe Washington Post
A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century
The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driverās 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 āāQ is for āquestion mark.ā A world that bears a question.ā 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 Aomameās and Tengoās 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 Orwellāsā1Q84 is a striking feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.