1Q84 is one of the best books I have read. The story has a good amount of romance, mystery, murder, family, history and tragedy. The author Haruki Murakami divided the story in three books in which the first two parts were published on May 29, 2009 and the third part on April 16, 2010.

The story takes place in 1984 in Tokyo with each book having a in-story time period of three months each, starting from April to December. The story has two main characters: Aomame, a 30 year old female, and Tengo Kawana, a male opposite Aomame. Through the entire three books, Murakami switches the story from the viewpoint of Aomame and Tengo (and sometimes Ushikawa, a private detective). The book starts with Aomame cataching a taxi, after which certain events make her go to a parallel world. She realizes this when she sees two moons in the sky, a white round moon and a smaller green lopsided moon besides it. At some point of time Tengo also switches track to this parallel world.

The story is about these two people realizing their love for each other from years ago, and trying to find each other in this strange and eventful world. They face several obstacles, many of which are life-threatening, but still manage to reach out to each other in the end.

I liked the flow of the story, though in my opinion the writing in the first book was the best. The story seems to flow slowly in the second book but regains the sped in the third book. However, the character description in the first two books is much better than that in the third book. The author described everything about the two main characters till the end, and in the end you would have the question, “What happend to them after this?”. It made you want to read more about them. However, I was disappointed how the author completely disregarded the supporting characters (except Ushikawa) at the end of the book. You would have the question about what happened to Fuka-Eri, or Tamaru, Nurses at the hospital, Komatsu and Professor Ebisuno. But besides this, I think the story is worth a read and I will surely recommend it to others.

For now, I will be reading The Art of War (Sun Tzu) but I will be back to other books by Murakami after that.