1Q84: English-language Publication To Start in Sept 2011

Scooped up by Knopf, as expected. Interestingly, the article only mentions the first 3 volumes, and as we all now know there'll be more, but I'd doubt that the rest wouldn't go to Vintage/Knopf as well.

Also interestingly, English-language readers will have to buy this one in at least two separate volumes. Murakami-lovers will recall that, though The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was similarly published in a serial format in Japan, U.S. readers got it all in one lump sum. Not this time:

Harvill Secker and Vintage are delighted to have acquired an ambitious trilogy from the extraordinary Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami. 1Q84 is comprised of three books, the last of which has only recently been announced in Japan for publication there next summer. The first two volumes came out in Japan this year with no information about their content being released before publication. They caused a sensation and 2.23 million copies are already in print. The books are set in the fictionalised and distorted year of 1984 between the months of April and June, July and September, and October and December. UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, have been acquired and Harvill Secker will publish the first two volumes in a single edition simultaneously with Knopf in the States in September 2011.