And once that happens, you’ve had it: things’ll never be the same.” Here he once again explores his favorite theme, succinctly stated by a character in his previous novel, “ After Dark”: “The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you. Murakami possesses many gifts, but chief among them is an almost preternatural gift for suspenseful storytelling. Still, you’ll be glad that Knopf decided to bring out the English version as a single massive hardcover: Once you start reading “1Q84,” you won’t want to do much else until you’ve finished it. Murakami’s latest novel, “ 1Q84,” is an immensely long book, originally published in three volumes in Japan (the first two parts in 2009, the third last year). Perhaps the American writer he most resembles, in multiple ways, is Michael Chabon.

His best-known novels - “ A Wild Sheep Chase,” “ Kafka on the Shore” and “ The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” - have even established Murakami as something of a cult author among college-age readers. He has already been honored with the Kafka Prize, the Jerusalem Prize and the World Fantasy Award. But Murakami is clearly one of the most popular and admired novelists in the world today, a brilliant practitioner of serious, yet irresistibly engaging, literary fantasy. Two weeks ago, Haruki Murakami was widely rumored to be among the front-runners for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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