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BookBrowse Reviews Kafka on The Shore: A masterpiece, entirely Nobel-worthy. Novel

Kafka on The Shore
by Haruki Murakami
Paperback, Jan 2006,
448 pages.
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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...
This review was originally published in March 2005, and has been updated for the January 2006 paperback release. Click here to go to this issue.
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