num_pages: 512
description: "A stunning work of art that bears no comparisons" the New York Observer wrote of Haruki Murakami's masterpiece, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. In its playful stretching of the limits of the real world, his magnificent new novel, Kafka on the Shore is every bit as bewitching and ambitious. The narrative follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters. Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy. The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his highly simplified life suddenly overturned. Their parallel odysseys - as mysterious to them as they are to the reader - are enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerising dramas. Fish tumble in storms from the sky; cats carry on conversations with people; a ghostlike if familiar pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night; a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since WWII. There is a brutal murder, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle. Yet this, as all else, is eventually resolved, even as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually unravelled. Murakami's new novel is at once a classic tale of quest, but it is also a bold exploration of mythic and contemporary taboos, of patricide, of mother-love, of sister-love. Above all it is an entertainment of a very high order.
language: English
title: Kafka On The Shore (Vintage Magic) by Haruki Murakami
titlecomplete: Kafka On The Shore (Vintage Magic) by Haruki Murakami (2005-10-06)
characters: Hoshino, Sakura, Miss Saeki, Kafka Tamura, Satoru Nakata, Oshima
genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Asia, Japan, Japanese Literature, Literature, Classics, Novels, Fantasy, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 445430
places: Japan, Takamatsu
series: 海辺のカフカ
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: World Fantasy Award
category: Novel, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Los Angeles Times Book Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
category: Longlist, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: PEN Translation Prize
category: Philip Gabriel, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis
category: Preis der Jugendjury, awardedAt: 1262332800000
name: Tähtifantasia Award, awardedAt: 1451635200000
name: Βραβείο Βιβλίου Public
category: Μεταφρασμένο μυθιστόρημα της χρονιάς (Translator: Αργυρώ Μαντόγλου), awardedAt: 1230796800000
name: Premio San Clemente Rosalía-Abanca
category: Lingua estranxeira
publisher: Vintage