The novel is essentially a love story, an unlikely one given the journey the two main characters have to take. Its initial print run, in the original Japanese, was sold out on the first day of release, largely due to advance orders, Murakami having already achieved a high literary profile by that stage. Despite the huge anticipation of the novel when it was announced, it was not received with universal critical acclaim. It is a huge book, three volumes totalling around a thousand pages, forty-five hours of listening time, recounting the events of a single year. By contrast, this complex and curious novel was one of the best things I have read in a long time. The second I have been listening to on audio for a few weeks, Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. The first, Booker Prize-winner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, was hard work and not a hit for me. I wrote last week about having finished two long books that I have been working through for a while.
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