Review
From the book jacket: A tour de force of
metaphysical reality, 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.
Comment: I thought this was a marvelous novel, although I'm not sure
that I entirely understood it. The upside is that I'm not the only one, it seems
that even Murakami had trouble understanding it! As he says, 'This may sound self-serving, but it's
true. I know people are busy and it depends, too, on whether they feel like
doing it, but if you have the time, I suggest reading the novel more...
Beyond the Book
Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and graduated from the Waseda University,
Tokyo, in 1975. He and his wife lived in Europe and the United States from 1986
to 1995 before returning to Tokyo. He did not write his first
novel,
Hear the Wind Sing (1979, translated 1987) until he was in his
thirties. His major breakthrough came in 1987 with the publication of
Norwegian Wood - a coming of age story named after the Beatles' song, which is
somewhat different to his other books in that it is written in a realistic
style, whereas his other books all have strong fantasy
elements.
In addition to writing his own books in Japanese, Murakami is a
skillful translator of English works into Japanese, including books
by Scott Fitzgerald,
Raymond Carver, John...
