1Q84 (Vintage International)

And it was the kind of thing that loses the most important nuances when reduced to words.

While going through her program, she played a recording of Janáček’s Sinfonietta conducted by George Szell.

“Tengo wrote a story about the Little People and their deeds. Eriko furnished the basic story, and Tengo converted it into an effective piece of writing. It was their collaborative effort, and it acted as an antibody, countering the momentum of the Little People. It was published as a book and became a bestseller, as a result of which, if only temp

“everybody feels safe belonging not to the excluded minority but to the excluding majority.

He did not engage in pointless intellectual display, but it was clear that he had read an enormous amount and that his knowledge was both wide-ranging and deep. Nor was it simply a matter of factual knowledge: he had an intuitive eye both for people and for books. His biases played a large role here, but for Komatsu bias was an important element of

On October 6, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by radical Islamic terrorists. Aomame recalled the event with renewed pity for Sadat. She had always been fond of Sadat’s bald head, and she felt only revulsion for any kind of religious fundamentalists. The very thought of such people’s intolerant worldview, their inflated sense of thei

“If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s salvation in life. Even if you can’t get together with that person.”

“Armstrong’s trumpet and singing are absolutely wonderful, of course, but if you ask me, the thing you should concentrate on is Barney Bigard’s clarinet,” she would say. Yet the actual number of Bigard solos on the record was small, and they tended to be limited to a single chorus. Louis Armstrong was the star of this record. But she obviously love

Once an hour Ushikawa left his camera and did some stretching for five minutes. During that interval his surveillance was put on hold, but he knew from the start that total coverage by one person was impossible. It was more important to make sure his body didn’t get numb. His muscles would start to atrophy and then he wouldn’t be able to react quic