Books and beyond

A Novel Within A Novel:  1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Tengo Kawana, a writer and part-time math instructor from Tokyo, is contacted by an editor friend who was reviewing submissions to a writer’s contest when he stumbled across the literary world’s next big thing. Authored by an unknown seventeen-year-old girl, the novel, Air Chrysalis, is highly original, but needs editing and rewriting, and the editor thinks that Tengo would be the perfect person for the job. It is only later that Tengo realizes he’s come to inhabit the world of Air Chrysalis, and he must enlist the help of a former elementary school crush to find out how to get back to his real life in 1984. Written in a lush and complex style, this book was originally published in Japan as three separate books, which were brought together in a single English-language edition.