Detached and disconnected
1Q
Japanesque
The Reading Map
4 Haruki Murakami
Fiction leaks into reality
Intellectual pursuits
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1Q84: The Reading Map 1Q84: The Reading Map is for female readers who appreciate fine literature and loved 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. You won’t find the usual popular fiction suspects such as The Millennium Trilogy or Shogun; nor will you find a list of other Murakami novels – these are too rudimentary for the intelligentsia. What you will find is something a bit more eclectic and elusive. You will find titles that you may not have come across because they haven’t been reviewed by The New York Times, The Guardian or The New Zealand Listener; titles written by lesserknown authors and titles you had forgotten were on your burgeoning ‘must read’ list. Using four key appeal characteristics I’ve selected titles that I think qualify as the ‘perfect’ book for 1Q84 fans. I hope they will entice, intrigue and delight you.
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DETACHED AND DISCONNECTED
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The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson FIC JOH Living in the hermit kingdom, Jun Do is the model North Korean citizen. He is rewarded for his loyalty by his frequent transfer among the country’s worst jobs – tunnel soldier, kidnapper and naval spy before being sent to prison.
The Investigation by Philippe Claudel Translated from the French by Daniel Hahn FIC CLA A man known simply as ‘the Investigator’ has been assigned the task of investigating twenty suicides at ‘the Firm’. What he encounters is vastly different to anything he can imagine.
Both 1Q84 and The Orphan Master’s Son share Orwellian elements. Where 1Q84 is subtle and intelligent, The Orphan Master’s Son is brutal and farcical.
As both the Investigator and Aomame confront many baffling and bizarre experiences they reach a heightened sense of selfawareness.
Strangers by Anita Brookner FIC BRO Paul is an elderly, retired banker. Anxious not to offend, he maintains a sense of aloofness. He fills his quiet days rereading Henry James, walking through his London neighbourhood, and paying regular visits to his only relative, the widow of a cousin. Strangers is reminiscent of the time Aomame spent in isolation reading Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past.
Open City by Teju Cole FIC COL Nigerian-born Julius aimlessly wanders the streets of New York City as a counterpoint to his busy days as a psychiatry intern. As he walks, the observations and introspections of his encounters flow from race to mental illness to migration to classical music to art and poetry. A man of letters and art, Julius is the classic flâneur – detached and disconnected.
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INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS 6
2666 by Roberto Bolano Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer FIC BOL A mock-documentary in five parts linked by the unsolved murders of 300 young, poor, mostly uneducated Mexican women in Santa Teresa. Not for the fainted-hearted. Dark, in another all too realistic way.
Hav by Jan Morris FIC MOR When Morris published Last Letters from Hav in 1985, it was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Here it is joined by Hav of the Myrmidons, a sequel that brings the story upto-date. An absorbing and intricate travel narrative of a fictional city located on the eastern Mediterranean.
The Book of God and Physics by Enrique Joven Translated from the Spanish by Dolores M. Koch FIC JOV The Voynich Manuscript, written in an unknown language, has developed a cult following of cryptographers. A young Jesuit priest and his two friends discover a key to unlocking the code. Physics, astronomy, alchemy and Jesuit history rolled into an intellectual mystery.
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall FIC HAL Eric Sanderson’s memories have been eaten by a conceptual shark; eleven times. The Raw Shark Texts tells the story of Eric’s hunt for his identity and the shark amidst a sea of words. Captivatingly clever.
The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy FIC MCC A one-act play involving two characters named, by the colour of their skin, White and Black. Black saves White from throwing himself in front of a train and the ensuing conversation revolves around two opposing worldviews on human existence. Bleak like Beckett.
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FICTION LEAKS INTO REALITY Even cats and dogs need names. A newly changed world must need one, too.
1Q84 – that’s what I’ll call this new world, Aomame decided. Q is for “question mark.” A world that bears a question.
First Among Sequels by
Yellow Blue Tibia by
Jasper Fforde FIC FFO
Adam Roberts SF ROB
Things in BookWorld are not going so well for literary detective Thursday Next. Readership levels are dropping , the Racy Novels genre is about to go to war with the Ecclesiastical and Feminist genres, and Sherlock Holmes has turned up dead.
Konstantin Skvorecky and a group of fellow science fiction writers are given a strange task by Stalin: to write a compelling piece of science fiction describing an alien invasion of Earth. Decades later it seems that the story concocted by the group is coming true.
Aomame would almost certainly find Thursday’s multiple realities unsettling.
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Blurred realities and the essence of truth are examined in Yellow Blue Tibia, just like in 1Q84.
Austenland by Shannon Hale FIC HAL When Jane's great aunt bequeaths her a trip to Austenland, a place where obsessive fans go looking to land an Austen hero, Jane’s fantasies of meeting her Mr Darcy suddenly become more real than she ever could have imagined. Maybe what we think is the dream is the reality and what we think is the real world is actually the illusion.
Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson FIC WIL 23 year old Alif provides computer security to enemies of the Arab states. When Alif comes into possession of a mysterious old book humans and jinn collide. The seen and unseen inhabit the same world but view it differently. Ho ho says the keeper of the beat.
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JAPANESQUE Daughter of the Sword by Steve Bein FIC BEI Daughter of the Sword alternates between the story of Mariko Oshiro, the only female detective in Tokyo’s most elite police force, and the exploits of three legendary swords as they find their way into the hands of different warriors throughout Japanese history. The protagonists in Daughter of the Sword and Murakami’s 1Q84 both have a sense of moral duty that they often struggle to uphold against social and cultural mores.
Escape from Amsterdam by Barrie Sherwood FIC SHE University student Aozora Fujiwara is deep in debt to a local gangster. When Auntie Okane dies and leaves Aozora and his sister a priceless inheritance, he thinks his problems are solved. Unfortunately it is not quite that straightforward. Escape from Amsterdam is a psychedelic portrait of contemporary Japan and a quest for authenticity and individuality in a world of mass media and pop culture.
Shame in the Blood by Tetsuo Miura Translated from the Japanese by Andrew Driver FIC MIU Six linked stories that describe episodes from the un-named narrator’s life who is tormented by the fear that his blood is cursed. Four of his five siblings have either committed suicide or disappeared, and the fifth is nearly blind. A distinctively Japanese brand of sensibility — melancholic, poetic, piercingly sad and serene at the same time. 10
The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino Translated from the Japanese by Alexander O. Smith with Elye J. Alexander FIC HIG Yasuko, a single mother, murders her ex-husband in a crime of passion and wants to give herself up. But Ishigami, her neighbour, and a brilliant mathematician has other plans. Police investigator Kusanagi, with the help of Dr. Yukawa, a physicist, senses that something is amiss. What ensues is an intellectual battle of wits between Ishigami and Yukawa. In addition to the obvious ‘maths and murder in Tokyo’ connection to 1Q84, The Devotion of Suspect X is also an insular and intense novel exploring feelings of loyalty, social pressure to conform and the dark pacts between neighbours or co-workers – very Japanesque.
Piercing by Ryu Murakami Translated from the Japanese by Ralph McCarthy FIC MUR
Kawashima has an overwhelming desire to stab his infant child with an ice pick. He resolves to divert the impulse by torturing and murdering an unsuspecting prostitute, Sanada Chiaki. However as Kawashima begins to execute his meticulous crime everything begins to unravel. Both Murakami stories are surreal and sexually anguished. Piercing however is violent, feverish and unnerving unlike the self-conscious blandness expressed in ‘the other’ Murakami’s 1Q84. Also, are ice picks a common household object in Japan?
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1Q84 NAME-DROPS
Steve McQueen
Duke Ellington
Faye Dunaway Mao Tse Tung
Sean Connery
Sir Winston Churchill
Bing Cosby
Ronald Reagan
Franz Joseph Haydn Gustav Mahler Charlie Mingus Billie Holiday
Lech Walesa Walter Mondale
Adolf Hitler
Charles Dickens
Robert Schumann
Jimmy Noone Johann Sebastian Bach
Kyu Sakamoto Jeff Beck
SigmundFreud
Nat King Cole
William Shakespeare
Neal Stephenson
David Foster Wallace August Strindberg Franz Kafka Anton Chekhov Yosui Inoue Carl Gustav Jung Marcel Proust George Orwell
Billy Rose Vladimir Horowitz
Johannes Brahms Yip Harburg John Dowland Ludwig van Beethoven
Kurt Vonnegut
Musicans/Composers
Louis Armstrong
Sidney Bechet
Foydor Dostoyevsky James George Frazer
Mick Jagger
Leos Janacek
Yasuhiro Nakasone Joseph Stalin
Honore de Balzac
John Lennon
Benny Goodman
Saddam Hussein Leo Tolstoy
Harold Arlen
Michael Jackson
Jean-Philippe Rameau Jean Sibelius
Barney Bigard
Georg Philipp Telemann Trummy Young Richard Wagner
Authors
Politicians
Actors