Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s great storytellers at the peak of his powers.Here we meet a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who is on the run, and Nakata, an aging simpleton who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their … spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey.
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I love this author, can’t put his books down, but am often disappointed at the end because I wonder what the point of the story was. But I continue to read and recommend because the journey is so compelling, even if the destination is not that great. I felt like a was living in the library with the character.
Haruki Murakami Murakami is my all-time favourite and this book is one of his finest creation. Loved it!
Beautiful, surprising, human.
Great book
Beautiful and quirky
A Surreal Dream of a Story
Sometimes a book is all about narrative; sometimes it’s just waves of emotions, swallowing you whole, leaving a little confused, a little sad, a little lost in your own labyrinth of books. I found this one perfect.
Great book with wholesome weird Murakami humour
Murakami is amazing..every time!
I felt like I wasn’t quite sophisticated enough for this one, but I still enjoyed it.
I love this book
Part David Foster Wallace part Douglas Adams, I would have loved to read this book in Japanese. Original and surreal with characters I could root for.
I have read almost all of Haruki Murakami’s books and they are all wonderful. He is one of the best and most original writers in the world. You never know quite where he is going to take you when you read his books but it’s always satisfying.
THIS WAS THE FIRST BOOK BY MUAKAMI THAT I READ, AND I IMMEDIATELY BECAME A FAN. I EVEN SUGGESTED THAT MY BOOK CLUB READ IT. ALL 25 LADIES WERE ENTHRALLED AND DELIGHTED BY MY RECOMMENDATION! I HAVE SINCE READ ALL THE BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR AND HAVE ENJOYED JUST ABOUT
EVERYONE OF THEM.
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I read this book after reading 1Q84, and I found certain similarities interesting.
This book had a slow start. The premise floats around alternating chapters of Kafka – a teen that has run away from home to live another life – and an event during WWII where a bunch of kids fell unconscious in Japan.
Though, in no time, both narratives ramp up into disjointed realities, violence, weird sex, and dreams. All dispersed between introspective pits for characters that wonder who their true selves are and if they could ever become who they feel they were meant to be.
There are so many cats in the world, and Siamese cats are the most sociably articulate and helpful. Carry sardines around if you plan to become a cat tracker. Word of advice: if you ever run into Johnnie Walker, it may be best to turn away.
I rotated between both the Audible audiobook and the paperback. The narration was fantastic. I would recommend either format.
Less than a week after completing this novel, I walked into my bedroom and was faced with a large slug slowly appearing from underneath my bed. Since this was my only opportunity, I didn’t turn away. I let it crawl onto some tissue before I ran upstairs and dumped it into a carnivorous pitcher plant.
The next day, I verified that it was dead and being digested.
Great book. Meow.
Absolutely original and one of its kind. Murukami completely rewrites the rules of fiction whenever he takes pen to paper.
This is an amazing book which combines Greek tragedy with the deep psychic wounds of a 15 year old boy. Surrounding characters help him dig deeply into these wounds to resolve/gather insight into who he is despite parental abandonment. And for all cat lovers this is a must read!
This author is not easy to read but I like his work. Always thought provoking and has a lot of depth and meaninh
As usual, Murakami provides his delighted readers with a unique experience in Kafka on the Shore. It is sumptuous novel, layered with symbolism and literary references. Murakami manages to masterfully preserve a strong sense of narrative and readability despite his experimental techniques and complex explorations of fundamental themes. Kafka on the Shore interweaves the stories of “Kafka” Tamura, a fifteen-year-old runaway and Nakata, an older man with magical gifts bestowed upon him after a near-death experience dating from his youth. The young “Kafka” searches for his mother who abandoned him, and Nakata seeks his destiny as a conduit between different states of reality. Both characters are on Odyssean quests that are piloted by fate and haunted by echoes of the past. Combined, the two protagonists’ stories are like a bildungsroman in forward and reverse. To attempt to simplify Murakami’s work would be an impossible and unworthy task for any reviewer. Kafka on the Shore is a book that needs to be digested slowly and lovingly. Any reader who soaks in its pages will be richly rewarded for doing so.
Good for fans of: philosophical stories incorporating magical realism; translated Japanese fiction; nuanced and contemplative literary fiction.
You may like this book if you liked: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles or other Murakami works; I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki; One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov; and Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges.
After I finished this book, I immediately resolved to read everything Haruki Murakami writes.
My first Murakami novel. Loved it, have now read nearly everything else he’s written.