March 31st, 2011 / 3:32 am
 Random

Early 1Q84 / Murakami Roundup

At the Alfred A. Knopf blog, Chip Kidd discusses the process of designing the book jacket for the long-awaited American edition of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84.

Murakami’s Random House site offers “The Murakami Mix” — partial selections from songs by Coltrane, Mozart, Pearl Jam, Frank Sinatra, and other artists whose work he wrote into Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, and others of his books.

The fan site murakami.ch offers an archive of older interviews, book reviews, and articles, plus the usual sort of thing you can find at Wikipedia.

In this clip from Japanese television, Murakami gives a speech in English, in which he says: “Like many other novelists, I do the opposite of what I am told.”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwhiyrspJ74

1Q84 hits bookstores October 25. According to Carolyn Kellogg at Jacket Copy: “‘1Q84’ is said to be a pun on George Orwell’s ‘1984’ — the Japanese word for ‘Q,’ apparently, being a homonym for the number 9.” And early talk at The Millions about the book’s Japanese publication offers this:

“Where Orwell published a novel about the future, Murakami approaches the year from the opposite direction, creating an alternate past.” Apparently, that’s where the similarities end, however. The book follows the stories of two characters, one a writer and the other a young PE instructor who become involved with a mysterious cult. As the story unfolds, they create an alternate universe, “a mysterious past, different than the one we know,” which the author character refers to as 1Q84.


15 Comments

  1. March 31st, 2011 / 8:14 am Anonymous—

      im more excited about this than pale king

  2. March 31st, 2011 / 7:38 am Odd Words « Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans—

      […] level of excitement around the cover and other aspects of Haruki Murakami’s long awaited novel 1Q84 is approaching a frightening, […]

  3. March 31st, 2011 / 1:35 pm stephen—

      i like that cover

  4. March 31st, 2011 / 1:35 pm stephen—

      i like that cover

  5. March 31st, 2011 / 2:16 pm beardobees—

      I’d love to take Murakami on at a 100K or any other ultra.

  6. March 31st, 2011 / 5:59 pm herocious—

      murakami digs The Lovin’ Spoonful

  7. March 31st, 2011 / 6:24 pm reynard—

      if there isn’t a page where arnold schwarzenegger swallows a bunch of quaaludes & throws an anvil through the house of representatives i’m going to pencil it into my copy when i buy one for $4 outside the library in a couple years

  8. March 31st, 2011 / 6:37 pm deadgod—

      hey, that “recent comments” mini-thread says “house of representatives” in the place of “japanese parliament”

      cut-paste-and-fingerpaint

  9. March 31st, 2011 / 6:38 pm stephen—
  10. March 31st, 2011 / 6:52 pm stephen—
  11. April 1st, 2011 / 10:14 am shaun gannon—

      if 9 = Q, then 1984 = cute teen eighty four

      not too sure abt that one, murakami

  12. April 1st, 2011 / 10:41 am Anonymous—
  13. April 3rd, 2011 / 5:11 am reynard—

      that was true

  14. October 18th, 2011 / 4:25 am Snar1ball—

      It has nothing to do with “cute teen”. The Japanese pronunciation of Q sounds the same as the word for “9”.

  15. October 18th, 2011 / 5:48 am shaun gannon—

      shut up i know