1Q84

1Q84 is a long novel that Haruki Murakami spent several years writing; after its publication in Japan in 2009 it quickly became the year's bestselling book. It is divided into three volumes—Book 1 (April–June), Book 2 (July–September), and Book 3 (October–December)—narrated in the third person. The first two volumes are structured around two alternating storylines, and the third volume adds a third perspective, creating a three-stranded parallel progression. The story takes place in Tokyo in 1984. The heroine, Aomame, is a fitness instructor who privately accepts commissions to eliminate men who abuse their wives; the hero, Tengo, is a cram-school math teacher who also writes but has never formally published a novel. They met as classmates at age ten, then went their separate ways, only to be drawn at thirty into the same series of surreal events: a girl's manuscript titled Air Chrysalis, an organization called Sakigake, two moons appearing side by side in the sky, and beings known as the Little People. Aomame calls the world she has entered, slightly different from the 1984 of her memory, "the year 1Q84," and the two search for each other in that world while each confronts violence, loneliness, and the difficulty of knowing themselves. Murakami has called the work the "comprehensive novel" he had envisioned, an attempt to render the many facets of the era in three dimensions and to transcend the established genres of pure literature. The novel draws its background material from the student movements of the late 1960s in Japan and the religious-group incidents of the 1980s, and weaves suspense, romance, and social critique into an exploration of institutionalized obedience, the closed inner self, and the relationship between violence and the individual. The Chinese edition, translated by Shi Xiaowei, is the most widely circulated version in the Chinese-speaking world.