The main literary sensation of the new century, "the magnum opus of a renowned 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 as in a mysterious 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 are rearmed with automatic pistols instead of revolvers after a shootout with cultists that shook the entire country, where LittlePeople — the Little Folk — emerge from the mouth of a dead goat and weave an Air Cocoon.