1Q84 (Three Volumes)

1Q84 is a long novel that Haruki Murakami worked on for years. The Chinese edition is translated by Shi Xiaowei and is divided into three volumes, corresponding respectively to 'April–June,' 'July–September,' and 'October–December'; the whole runs to some twelve hundred pages. The story is set in Tokyo and centers on a man and a woman in their early thirties: Aomame, who works outwardly as a fitness instructor but secretly serves as an assassin, dealing with men who commit violence; and Tengo, who teaches mathematics at a cram school and writes fiction, though his work has never been formally published. They were classmates at the age of ten and then lost touch, each longing for the other in the Tokyo of 1984. An accident makes Aomame realize that she has entered another world called 'the year 1Q84': a second moon appears in the sky, and rules and memories have undergone a subtle but fundamental shift. Tengo, meanwhile, is commissioned to rewrite Air Chrysalis, a story by a young girl named Fuka-Eri, and in the course of rewriting gradually comes into contact with the 'Sakigake' cult, the image of the 'Little People' in Air Chrysalis, and the two moons. The two storylines unfold separately and gradually converge; the third volume adds a third point-of-view character, Ushikawa, giving the story a three-line parallel structure. The novel blends suspense, romance, religious cults, and memories of violence, and is regarded as Murakami's attempt at a 'comprehensive novel.'