1Q84. Book 1. April–June

The major literary sensation of the new century, a “magnum opus by the celebrated master” and an “absolute must-read for anyone who wants to understand Japanese culture today,” as critics put it. The action of the book takes place not so much in nineteen eighty-four as in nineteen—an unknown year—four, in a world where some see two moons in the sky, where Janáček’s “Sinfonietta” holds the key to eternal love, where after a nationwide shootout with cultists, police were armed with automatic pistols instead of revolvers, and where Little People—the Little Folk—crawl out of the mouth of a dead goat and weave an Air Cocoon.