In May 2009, Haruki Murakami released "1Q84" to tremendous sales and mostly positive domestic reviews. The novel, released initially in two parts, follows two, 29-year-old Tokyoites as they are pulled into an alternative version of the year 1984.
We follow Aomame, a fitness instructor and part-time assassin, and Tengo Kawana, a tutor at a cram school and a part-time writer and editor, over the course of 1,055 pages as they are sucked into the intrigues of a fictional religious cult, loosely based on Aum Shinrikyo and radical movements from the 1960s and '70s.
Despite the novel's prodigious length, the ending that Murakami provides leaves major sections of the plot unresolved: We don't know what will happen to Aomame and Tengo, the ultimate fate of the religious cult is unexplained and the powers that control the mysterious bizarro 1984 — dwarves called "Little People," a set of dualities between "receivers and perceivers" and "mothers and daughters" — are never clearly outlined.