On his fifteenth birthday, a boy who calls himself Kafka Tamura runs away from his father's home in Tokyo, haunted by a dark prophecy and the absence of his mother and sister, who left when he was small. He ends up in Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku, where he finds refuge in a quiet private library run by the elegant, reserved Miss Saeki and a sharp librarian named Oshima.
In alternating chapters, Satoru Nakata, an elderly man left unable to read after a strange incident during the Second World War, earns pocket money by finding lost cats, with whom he can converse. A violent encounter sends him on the road too, accompanied by a good-natured truck driver named Hoshino. Fish fall from the sky, Colonel Sanders appears, and the two journeys draw toward each other.
Murakami borrows the shape of Greek tragedy, especially the Oedipus myth, and blends it with Japanese folklore, pop culture and classical music. The novel resists tidy explanation and invites readers to live with mysteries. Philip Gabriel's translation won it a wide English readership, and it received the World Fantasy Award in 2006.
Book details
| Author | Haruki Murakami |
|---|---|
| First published | 2002 |
| Original language | Japanese |
| Translated by | Philip Gabriel |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 467 |
| Setting | Tokyo and Takamatsu, Shikoku, Japan |
| Awards | World Fantasy Award for Best Novel 2006 |
Themes
- Fate
- Identity
- Memory
- The unconscious
- Loss of a parent
Who should read it
Readers who enjoy dreamlike, puzzling fiction that mixes myth, metaphysics and everyday detail.