1Q84 by Haruki Murakami – Book Review

I was told that I have to read this book, and now I am telling you, you have to read this book. It's amazingly good and strange to the point that I can't even decide which genre it is. I guess you can say it is a dystopian novel, but fantasy and horror can also work in my opinion.

The book takes place in the year 1984 in Tokyo (it was published in 2010) and it takes place during one full year. It follows two character: Aomame and Tengo. Aomame is a fitness instructor with a dark past and a dark future. Tengo is a math teacher and an aspiring author.

At the beginning of the novel Aomame is sitting in a taxi on her way to a job. She starts to notice that the world around her is not exactly the one that she was in before. She calls it 1Q84, Q for question. As she has a lot of questions about this world and how did she get there and what does it all mean.

Tengo is also entangled in this world but in a different manner. He is asked to become a ghostwriter of a peculiar story, by a peculiar author that will change his life forever.

Obviously the two characters are connected. This is a story about characters more than anything. The story explore its two characters deeply, especially since they are both thinkers and loners.

Even the secondary characters get a wonderful treatment and you cannot say that any of them is not well explored. It doesn't matter what anyone does, no one is this story is cliché evil. Well, almost nobody. But still, you feel that you can understand almost all of the characters in the novel even when things get really weird.

Things get weirder in this novel then I can explain. I am not saying that it's bad – it's not it's great. It's just really strange and can make you ask yourself what the hell I just read.

Yes, this story also has a lot of reference to 1984. Instead of Big Brother, you have Little Brother and a shady organization on the horizon that watches over everything before the era of cellphones and constant surveillance. It's fun when the characters themselves reference the story itself within the story.

I feel like I should also state that this book is comprised of three separate volumes, but please don't let that deter you.

If you are looking for something different and refreshing to read, you should totally read this book. It is a very strange masterpiece.

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