1Q84 (Vintage International)

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

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 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.