US stores open late to cope with demand for translation of Japanese author's 1,000-page book
When Haruki Murakami's trilogy IQ84 was first published in Japan, it sold more than 1m copies in two months. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features
It is a launch more reminiscent of a Harry Potter book than a lengthy, difficult novel by a Japanese author, but bookshops in the US are planning to stay open until midnight to cope with the demand for the translation of Haruki Murakami's 1,000-page trilogy, 1Q84.
There is a video trailer on YouTube and Spotify song lists of music associated with the jazz-loving author. Others have put up their own sections of translation on the internet for fans unwilling to wait the two years it has taken since the book was first published in Japan, selling an extraordinary 1m copies in two months.
Literary blogs have pored over revelations about plot and character and themes that Murakami has visited before – from love to messianic cults to cats and music, to his use of surreal devices. Murakami's English-language publishers, Knopf in the US and Harvill Secker in the UK, are anticipating an equally extraordinary level of interest when 1Q84 is published next month. The story follows the characters of Aomame, a hired killer, and Tengo, a novelist, whose lives increasingly overlap in a world that seems ever more unreal.
In the US, interest has been such that Knopf has already ordered a second print run. In the UK, Bethan Jones, of Harvill Secker, said inquiries from booksellers were running at 10-15 a day. "He is huge in Japan. Here he started out as an alternative, cult author. But this book looks as though it will be immense. It is really unusual for a book in translation, but we have produced a massive print run."
Following the runaway success of the book in Japan – its title is a play on George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, with the English letter "Q" pronounced the same as the Japanese word for nine, kyu – his publishers took the unusual decision to ask two of his regular translators, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, to work simultaneously on the three books to speed up the production of an English version.
Full story at The Guardian.
There is a video trailer on YouTube and Spotify song lists of music associated with the jazz-loving author. Others have put up their own sections of translation on the internet for fans unwilling to wait the two years it has taken since the book was first published in Japan, selling an extraordinary 1m copies in two months.
In the US, interest has been such that Knopf has already ordered a second print run. In the UK, Bethan Jones, of Harvill Secker, said inquiries from booksellers were running at 10-15 a day. "He is huge in Japan. Here he started out as an alternative, cult author. But this book looks as though it will be immense. It is really unusual for a book in translation, but we have produced a massive print run."
Following the runaway success of the book in Japan – its title is a play on George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, with the English letter "Q" pronounced the same as the Japanese word for nine, kyu – his publishers took the unusual decision to ask two of his regular translators, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, to work simultaneously on the three books to speed up the production of an English version.
Full story at The Guardian.
1 comment:
I'm a little bit excited about this one. Will definitely be buying.
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