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  • Reading Kafka on the Shore

  • A complex, intertwined narrative featuring two key players, Kafka on the Shore meanders back and forth between a 15-year-old Japanese runaway who calls himself Kafka and an elderly man, Nakata, who is "slow" due to an accident suffered in childhood. While each story is basically an entity into itsel ... Continue

    A complex, intertwined narrative featuring two key players, Kafka on the Shore meanders back and forth between a 15-year-old Japanese runaway who calls himself Kafka and an elderly man, Nakata, who is "slow" due to an accident suffered in childhood. While each story is basically an entity into itself, Kafka and Nakata are connected through a very significant incident that eventually leads them to the same city.

    Kafka sets on his path as he is hoping to avoid a fate his father has predicted. Never able to connect to the man, Kafka's opinion deteriorates when his father predicts he will be murdered by Kafka, and then Kafka will go on to sleep with his mother and sister. It all sounds a lot like any number of Greek tragedies, which is probably no mistake as Murakami references these throughout the book.

    Kafka ends up finding shelter at an unsual library, which becomes his home and refuge for a period. Meanwhile, Nakata is on his own path. Able to exist thanks to a government subsidy arranged by his family, Nakata earns a little money on the side by finding lost cats. He is able to do this because he is one of the few people - perhaps the only person - who can speak their language. His occupation eventually leads him to a man who calls himself Johnny Walker. Their encounter directly links him to Kafka, and puts Nakata on a quest of his own.

    Kafka on the Shore relies heavily on a variety of dream worlds, so that at times even the "real world" story has an ethereal feel to it. It's difficult to describe without revealing too much, but the book is quite entrancing.

    

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• ― moogle said on May 28, 2007 about the Hardcover edition| Add your feedback

• 1 of 1 person find this helpful

  • Kafka

  • Murakami at his best. I picked up this book by chance and absolutely loved it. It is the type of book once you start you can not put down but when you approach the end you read slowly because it was so much fun you don't want the ride to end. I read several of the reviews on the site and felt they p ... Continue

    Murakami at his best. I picked up this book by chance and absolutely loved it. It is the type of book once you start you can not put down but when you approach the end you read slowly because it was so much fun you don't want the ride to end. I read several of the reviews on the site and felt they provided an accurate synopsis of the plot and outline of the book. I can not imagine anyone NOT enjoying this book. It is wonderful on so many levels. I plan on reading it again in a few months. In an radio interview Murakami gave on NPR he spoke of the "hidden" references and clues in the book. I do think it is one of those rare books that is even better the second time around. I recently read Norwegian Wood which I also enjoyed very much and then picked up his latest book of 24 short stories. I was very disappointed in the book of short stories. I felt only four of five of the short stories were worthy of his talent.

    

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• ― Tfh182 said on Jul 1, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Yes, it is Haruki again. Haruki's magic words traveling the time, unveiling the loneliness in this modern world and unearthing the gravitating fate entangling you and me.

    

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• ― Renewang said on May 11, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • The book was wonderful. Strange, but additively wonderful. Although I was a bit at lost with the ending, the book was captivating as Murakami never fails to surprise.

    

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• ― coooo said on May 22, 2007 | Add your feedback

With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come.

This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle–yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.

Extravagant in its accomplishment, Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s truly great storytellers at the height of his powers.


From the Hardcover edition.

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• Review (2 comments, 2 people)

• FictionForeignJapanJapanese fictionJapanese literatureMurakami HarukiMy favorites21st c.magical realismNovel