A NOTE 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.
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READER’S GUIDE
1Q84
by Haruki Murakami
The introduction, discussion questions, and suggested further reading that follow are
designed to enhance your group’s discussion of
1Q84
, the magnum opus of critically
acclaimed and best-selling novelist, Haruki Murakami, author of
The Wind-Up Bird
Chronicle
,
Norwegian Wood
, and
Kafka On the Shore.
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Introduction
Set in 1984, Haruki Murakami’s expansive new novel tells the story of the deeply
intertwined fates of its two remarkable protagonists, Tengo and Aomame.
Tengo and Aomame were grade school classmates who experienced a moment of
mystical union when Aomame, a girl shunned for belonging to a fringe religious
group, suddenly seized Tengo’s hand and looked deeply into his eyes. Their paths
diverged shortly after Aomame’s impulsive and ambiguous gesture, but each was left
profoundly changed by it. For the next 20 years, they are held in the gravitational pull
of this brief moment of connection.
Now they are nearly thirty. Tengo is a math teacher and unpublished novelist,
drifting rather aimlessly through his life, with no clear sense of purpose or ambition.
Aomame is a fitness instructor, bodyworker and, most importantly, an assassin of men
who have violently abused their wives.
When Komatsu, an unscrupulous and cynical editor, asks Tengo to rewrite a story
by 17-year-old Fuka-Eri so that it can be considered for a major literary prize, Tengo
realizes he’s entering into a devil’s bargain. But he’s so taken with the story that he is
unable to resist Komatsu’s offer. Accepting the task opens up a Pandora’s box of
perils that far surpass even Tengo’s and Komatsu’s worst fears. The novel,
Air
Chrysalis
, becomes an immediate best seller, attracting widespread media attention
that threatens to uncover Komatsu’s and Tengo’s scam. More ominously, the novel
has aroused the ire of the “little people,” a malevolent group of other-worldly
miniature spirits.
Aomame meanwhile has her own secrets. Employed by an elderly dowager, she
stealthily and expertly murders men who have abused their wives but remain
unprosecuted. When she accepts the assignment to kill the heavily protected leader of
Sakigake, the very religious cult that Fuka-Eri had fled and written about in
Air
Chrysalis
, she too enters a world of danger she never could have imagined. She has
literally entered another world, one that is nearly identical to the ordinary world of
1984 except that it has two moons in the sky. And in this new world, the flow of
time—and rules of reality—have been subtly altered.
Blurring the line between possible and impossible, linear and non-linear time,
fiction and reality, fate and free will,
1Q84
is both a metaphysical mind-teaser and a
fast-paced thriller where the stakes for Tengo and Aomame couldn’t be any higher.
Murakami’s most ambitious novel to date,
1Q84
is also an extraordinary love story, a
story about the power of a single moment of deep connection to transcend time and
space—and justify even the greatest of risks.
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