He is, of course, single and has few friends. His ambition is to be a writer and, in his spare time, he writes. He is a maths teacher, teaching at a crammer school. I have previously mentioned the basis for a Murakami novel and this one follows the usual trajectory. This story offers an alternative fictional concept, the Little People. Were a real Big Brother to turn up, we would recognise and reject him. Just to take this one step further, one of the characters points out that 1984 is, of course, the year of Big Brother. She has called this 1Q84, with Q standing for Question. One of the characters, Aomame, feels that, for some reason, there has been a change in the world, a parallel universe, to use the science fiction term, whereby a false 1984 has diverged from the real 1984. The novel is set in 1984 or, rather, in a 1984.

The number 9 in Japanese is pronounced approximately the same as our letter Q. the first character is the number one, not the letter i. All this not terribly relevant preamble is because one of the two main characters in this book is a nice (more or less) professional killer.įirstly, a quick word about the title. Professional killer Westerns started to get morally ambiguous with Sam Peckinpah and really morally ambiguous with Spaghetti Westerns. There were the bad guy professional killers, killing anyone for money and usually destined to meet their fate at the hand of the hero and there were the good guy professional killers, those who were after the bad guys. Professional killers do not figure strongly in literary novels (though, of course, they do in thrillers.) I do not read thrillers so I do not know whether there are nice professional killers in these works but, of course, this genre, if there is a professional killer genre, started many years ago and was particularly portrayed in Westerns. The slight twist is that, despite, being so nice, the Cusack character is a professional killer.

In this case, he is going to his ten year high school reunion where he will meet his girlfriend of ten years ago and then…, well you know what will happen. The basis of that film is that John Cusack plays, as usual, a lovable but slightly oddball character. I have to admit to liking John Cusack films and to liking, in particular, Grosse Point Blank. Home » Japan » Haruki Murakami » 1Q84 (1Q84) Haruki Murakami: 1Q84 (1Q84)

Iq 84 book