1Q84: Books 1 and 2

A surreal and fractured dose of storytelling that only Murakami cold write.

Graham Morrison, five stars, Linux Voice

It’s pure, uncut Murakami.

Business Insider

Murakami's magnum opus

Japan Times

A surreal twist on the formula of David Nicholl's One Day; fate preventing two soulmates from getting together from getting together for decades... Stieg Larsson enthusiasts may enjoy the novel too as Aomame could be Lisbeth Salander's Japanese cousin... What makes Murakami cool as well as popular is has metaphysical mischievousness, his playing around with the idea of alternate realities... Every time you open 1Q84, you get the sensation of falling down the rabbit hole, into a unique and addictive world

Sunday Express

An extraordinary love story. Murakami is renowned for his exceptional imagination and this book does not disappoint; he weaves a myriad of worlds, beliefs and themes together in a moving combination. Compelling and bewildering, there's nonetheless something profoundly human and stark in simplicity at the heart of this love story: the power of true love.

Aesthetica

It is natural that his work should enchant younger readers, to whom the problems of being are still fresh, as well as others who never grew out of such puzzlements - that his books should send an outstretched hand of sympathy to anyone who feels that they too have been tossed, without their permission, into a labyrinth

Guardian

1Q84 reads like a cross between Stieg Larsson and Roberto Bolaño... In its bones, this novel is a thriller

Daily Telegraph

A whole host of Murakami icons from talking cats to one-way portals all contribute to this rich and often perplexing mix. But ultimately, 1Q84 is a simple love story that ends on a metaphysical cliff-hanger... a delicious paranormal stew

Independent on Sunday

1Q84 has a range and sophistication that surpasses anything else in his oeuvre. It is his most achieved novel; an epic in which form and content are neatly aligned... So like Murakami himself, I'll borrow from Orwell: 1Q84 is quite simply doubleplusgood

Independent on Sunday

1Q84 is an extraordinary feat of sustained imagination

Evening Standard

[One of] .. the best books to really get your teeth into this winter... Part thriller, part love story, the first print run sold out in one day in the author's native Japan

Grazia

Fans, however, will recognise many elements in this fantastical tale, which at its twisted heart is another boy-meets-girl love story but which encompasses the ominous power of cults, a teasing preoccupation with quotidian mundanity, a sackload of music and literature references and a healthy dose of the downright bizarre.

Metro

1Q84 is certainly an engrossing, other-worldly mystery to lose yourself in, with a good deal of humour and a considerable thiller-esque page turning pull... Reading it is an intense and addictive experience, and this is no mean feat at all. However, it is also far more than that- it's a highly ambitious work, which raises more questions than it resolves in its intricate plot. A more optimistic take on George Orwell's 1984, kicking off in April that year just like the latter's dystopia, it is concerned with postmodern issues such as the rewriting of the past and the slippery dividing line between fact and fiction, exploring just how uncertain our grasp of reality can be, especially as the world we were born into morphs into somewhere quite different.... For all its fantasy surface and sexy details, this is a work of considerable and haunting complexity, which is likely to resonate a long time after one has stopped turning its numerous pages.

Madeleine Minson, Standpoint

Contains enough of his weird offbeat allure to satisfy devotees

Benjamin Evans, Sunday Telegraph