Japan ~ 1Q84

Amy recommends 1Q84 as a novel:  "1Q84 tells the strange story of Aomame and Tengo as they get caught up in events in a world that is parallel to the real world of Tokyo in 1984."  Learning about the country is also important:  "What I also expected and enjoy most about reading Murakami, however, is the little window it gives me into life in Japan: the way he describes the foods they eat and how they prepare them, their homes, public transport, the way people interact with each other, the educational system, and life in general."

1Q84 ~ by Haruki Murakami, 2011, fiction (Japan)

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.  A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84.  Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project.  He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.  As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer:  a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.  This is a dystopian novel to rival George Orwell’s 1984.

This novel was first published in three volumes in Japan in 2009–2010.  Its first printing sold out the day it was released, and it reached sales of one million within a month, according to Wikipedia.  The English edition was published in 2011.