A novel by the most famous author of contemporary Japanese prose, the main literary sensation of the new century, a "magnum opus of the celebrated master" and "a must-read for anyone who wants to understand Japanese culture today," according to critics. The action of the book takes place not so much in nineteen eighty-four, but rather in a unknown nineteen eighty-four, in a world where some see two moons in the sky, where the key to eternal love is Janáček's Sinfonietta, where police officers after a shootout with sectarians that shook the entire country are rearmed with automatic pistols in exchange for revolvers, where LittlePeople — the Little Folk — emerge from the mouth of a dead goat and weave an Air Cocoon.