Kafka on the Shore

In "Kafka on the Shore," Haruki Murakami presents a novel that is just as ambitious and expansive as "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," which has been celebrated both here and globally for its remarkable ambition and achievement. Its growing popularity suggests it will be read and admired for decades to come. This magnificent new work possesses a similarly extraordinary scope and the ability to astonish, entertain, and enchant the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it revolves around two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a disturbing Oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-lost mother and sister; and an aging simpleton named Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and is drawn to Kafka for reasons he cannot comprehend, much like the most basic activities of daily life. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched by vivid companions and mesmerizing events. Cats and humans engage in conversations, a ghostly pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest shelters soldiers seemingly unchanged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. A brutal murder occurs, with the identities of both the victim and the perpetrator shrouded in mystery—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually resolved, just as the intertwined fates of Kafka and Nakata are gradually unveiled, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start. Extravagant in its accomplishment, "Kafka on the Shore" showcases one of the world's truly great storytellers at the height of his powers.