Kafka On The Shore

Haruki Murakami-"Kafka On The Shore"
Vintage, 512p.,published 2005, hardback. Read in a bookring (courtesy robert-walker)

Kafka Tamura is 15 years old and he runs from home. Nakata is a strange old man who lost his memories and ability to read due to a weird incident during the Second World War.They never meet in the novel but there is something which connects them.There are a lot of weird things in this novel- men conversing with cats and stones,leeches falling from the sky,a lorry driver who becomes addicted to Beethoven.All of this is wonderfully mixed in a unforgetable world of feelings and subconscious ghosts. Kafka runs through a lot of hardships and difficult decisions but at the end of his adventure he is a kind of re-born and ready to face the world again. This makes me view the book as an original rite-of-passage fiction. There are many myths involved here,making the unique mixture of Murakami`s worlds.I enjoyed this novel greatly.

Who should read this book?
You should pick up this book if you are interested in a good mystery with supernatural elements,put together with good psychological skill and the gift of eloquent narration. Some people find Murakami`s novel too weird,so if you tend to like more usual,kind of everyday life fiction,probably you are not going to like it so much.
If you like this,you can read also:
Sputnik Sweetheart" by Haruki Murakami
Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
In the Country of Last Things
The New York Trilogy (Contemporary American Fiction Series)