Kafka on the Shore
Kafka on the Shore
Fish fall from the sky. Cats hold conversations. A boy runs away from a prophecy and straight into it.
Two Labyrinths
Haruki Murakami's 2002 novel alternates between two narratives. Kafka Tamura, a 15-year-old who flees his father's house and an Oedipal prophecy he is desperate to escape, wanders to a private library in Takamatsu. Nakata, an old man left mentally altered after a wartime incident, can speak with cats and is drawn toward the same destination by forces neither he nor the reader fully understands. The novel moves between them with jazz, Beethoven, and dreams woven through every chapter.
Reading Kafka on the Shore
Strangeness
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Chapter
"And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through. But one thing is certain: when you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in.
"Haruki Murakami · Kafka on the Shore
Murakami wrote Kafka on the Shore and his earlier novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle at the same desk across different years, claiming the two books feel like brothers to him. He writes every morning from 4am to noon.
The novel won the World Fantasy Award in 2006 and is widely considered Murakami's most ambitious work. It was his own choice for a US publisher launch, bypassing his usual Japanese serialisation process.