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1Q84  By  cover art

1Q84

By: Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin - translator, Philip Gabriel - translator
Narrated by: Allison Hiroto, Marc Vietor, Mark Boyett
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Publisher's summary

Earphones Award Winner (AudioFile Magazine)

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 Haruki Murakami's most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.

BONUS AUDIO: Audible interviews the translators of 1Q84, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel.

©2011 Haruki Murakami (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"This imaginative, lengthy novel satisfies as a mystery, fantasy, and humorous coming-of-age tale—all blended with the vagaries of love and loss in a dystopia mired in strange cults and mathematical/musical dreamscapes. One surmises that it's no accident that the book's enigmatic title relates to George Orwell's 1984." (AudioFile)

“Profound . . . A multilayered narrative of loyalty and loss . . . A fully articulated vision of a not-quite-nightmare world . . . A big sprawling novel [that] achieves what is perhaps the primary function of literature: to reimagine, to reframe, the world . . . At the center of [1Q84’s] reality . . . is the question of love, of how we find it and how we hold it, and the small fragile connections that sustain us, even (or especially) despite the odds . . . This is a major development in Murakami’s writing . . . A vision, and an act of the imagination.” (David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times)

1Q84 is one of those books that disappear in your hands, pulling you into its mysteries with such speed and skill that you don’t even notice as the hours tick by and the mountain of pages quietly shrinks . . . I finished 1Q84 one fall evening, and when I set it down, baffled and in awe, I couldn’t help looking out the window to see if just the usual moon hung there or if a second orb had somehow joined it. It turned out that this magical novel did not actually alter reality. Even so, its enigmatic glow makes the world seem a little strange long after you turn the last page. Grade: A.” (Rob Brunner, Entertainment Weekly)

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What listeners say about 1Q84

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    1,391
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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Who knew 46 hours could be so long?

I listened to about 20 hours of this.
Lots on intriguing stuff in there and I definitely love Murakami's obsessiveness. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is one of my favorite books of all time
But by the time I got to book three, I just DIDN'T CARE ANYMORE.
The length isn't the problem, it's the repetitiveness. I was hoping it would have some kind of cumulative effect, and unfortunately that effect was sheer boredom. I had to stop listening; I was bludgeoned out of my curiosity. I no longer wanted to know what would happen next because the answer was "nothing" -- and a whole lot more of it.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Too long. Too repeating.

I found the book too long with too many repeating. Especially the first two parts.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Intriguing until it got x-rated

Definitely not family friendly. I was hoping that this could be a cool story based on the description, however it ended up getting kind of filthy. If you like audio porn, this might be your thing. Otherwise, give it a miss.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

listen at 1.2x speed and dont expect any answers.

i have such mixed feelings

the most intriguing aspect of the story is treated as background. but you will hear about every article of clothing, meal prepared or eaten, and every bodily function of the main characters.
absolutely pissed i listened to the whole thing hoping to find out what the little people were up to and there is just no answer there.

i liked the introspective feel, but it did drag a little too much. i honestly would have exchanged it if i hadn't waited too long to start it(i was intimidated, this puppy is loooong)
but the detailed portraiture of some of the characters was interesting.
and the idea of sort of accidentally slipping into another timeline/universe/world is so interesting.
however, the things going on around this cult are disgusting and i felt like some of it was almost being excused?

too much sex. maybe thats just me. idk.

it was just..
disappointing.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

not bad. I finished it.

The book didn't seem to get to any particular point. I was left without strong impressions. Nonetheless it was an interesting story.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Love Grows Beyond Time and Space

I am very happy that I chose the Audible version of this book. The performances were excellent. Each day, I looked forward to listening to more of this intricate story. However, even devoted fans of Murakami (myself included!) will be challenged by the length of this work. Readers who have never read anything by this author should probably start with a different book. Fans will probably like Killing Commendatore which riffs on some of the same themes as this book. However, I think that I really loved 1Q84. In its own special way, it is a creation of love and what an amazing and romantic love it is! Both 1Q84 and Killing Commendatore try to help us make sense of the complexities, challenges, and failures of the modern world and our place in it.

As some of the other reviewers mentioned, it is important to note that the author is Japanese and these books are translated. Differences in culture and perception should be taken into account.

My frustration with 1Q84 was that in all of those pages (46 hours of listening), I still didn’t find the answers to most of my questions...I felt that there were too many loose ends. But that’s the way life is. Time moves forward and our questions and our feelings don’t always get resolved. I plan to listen to this book again...maybe I missed some important details...I think I just want to get lost in it again...But first I think that I need to read some Proust.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

First book I couldn't finish

I cared less and less about each of the characters in this book as the story went on. The story itself began to lose me about 10 hours in to listening to it, and I kept at it another 20 hours just because I could listen to the book for 5 minutes before going to bed and then fall asleep instantly. Ultimately I gave up on the story with almost 10 hours remaining. I don't know how it ended and I couldn't care less about missing out on it.

The story was insanely repetitive, often revisiting things that had happened earlier in the book multiple times using the same exact language to describe the scene on each of the revisits. The language itself was stilted and unnatural, almost as if the publisher used Google Translate to translate the story from Japanese.

The male narrators were fine, but the female narrator's precise, clipped pronunciation made listening to the story even more tiresome than the awkward language did standing on its own.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Ponderous and pointless

I wanted to like this and stayed with it for 20 hours until I realized that I didn’t care what happened anymore. The female protagonist’s story is particularly weak with possibly the worst assassination scene ever written (her first in the book).

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Male fantasy land

Narration is fantastic and the story itself seems like it could be interesting if the author could stand to not talk about the female characters' bodies and sex lives for five f*cking minutes. There is so much interesting plot stuff that gets immediately ignored or pushed aside in favour of describing how beautiful a teenage girl's breasts are or how many teenagers want to sleep with the 30 year old male main character.
If that interests you or you don't mind it this book is probably great but honestly I couldn't make it past chapter 6

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disappointed

The narration is great and that is what helped me to continue on. Sadly, the story was horrible, it had such promise but it is a huge let down.

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