1Q84: Book 3 (2Q84 2)

“Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa.”

Two story lines at work, with different starting points but running parallel to each other.

“The town at the mercy of a deep loneliness during the day and, come night, of large cats. There’s a beautiful river running through it, and an old stone bridge spanning the river. But it’s not where we should stay.”

“What a strange world. With each passing day, it’s getting harder to know how much is just hypothetical and how much is real. Tell me, Tengo, as a novelist, what is your definition of reality?” “When you prick a person with a needle, red blood comes out – that’s the real world,” Tengo replied. “Then

As he wrote, his mind was living in that world. Even when he lay down his pen and stood up from the desk, his mind remained there. There was a special sensation of his body and his mind beginning to separate, and he could no longer distinguish the real world from the fictional.

“To get something important, people have to pay a price. That’s the rule the world operates by.”

As his father lay on this plain bed in the sanatorium by the shore, at the same time he might very well be surrounded by scenes and memories invisible to others, in the still darkness of a back room in his own vacant house.

Absconded

The whole concept of getting something out of his system was something he might be lacking.

Aomame tried her best to keep her mind clear of any thoughts, but it was impossible not to think of anything. Nature abhors a vacuum. At the very least, though, she felt that now there was nothing for her to hate.