Read this creative masterpiece from the creator of Norwegian Wood, an international bestseller. It is the year 1984. Aomame is seated in a taxi on a Tokyo motorway. Her work isn't the kind that can be discussed in public, but she needs to complete an assignment quickly, so the driver offers a suggestion when the traffic comes to a standstill. She nods in agreement, but as a result of her behaviour, she begins to feel more and more removed from reality. She has been on a top-secret mission, and her next task will bring her into contact with the founder of a religious sect who appears to be superhuman. Tengo, meanwhile, aspires to write. He unintentionally gets embroiled in a weird situation involving a literary award that a mysterious seventeen-year-old girl has submitted her remarkable first novel. It seems to be based on her own experiences and moves readers in unusual ways. Can her story really be true? Both Aomame and Tengo notice that the world has grown strange; both realise that they are indispensable to each other. While their stories influence one another, at times by accident and at times intentionally, the two come closer and closer to intertwining. 'It is a work of maddening brilliance and gripping originality, deceptively casual in style, but vibrating with wit, intellect and ambition' The Times.