This was my first ever Murakami read. The name in the start attracted my attention and later when I asked a few friends about giving me an opinion on this book, I was told to just have a go at it the first chance that I get. I read the summary of this book on good reads and I wasn't able to make it out if I should go with it or not. Meanwhile, I had a chance to visit NYC. And libraries and bookshops are always my must go places whenever or wherever I get a chance. Well, I bought this book on my visit to a bookshop. Even after coming back home, I had some hesitation towards reading it.
But once I started it, I put it down only after completing it. Such a page turner was it to me. If you ask me what this book was about, I would reply what this book was not about? If you ask me what did I learn from it, I won't be reluctant to say what topic did it not cover! The author picked up a little of everything from the universe and put into this book and still didn't even touch a single thing. After being a long time reader, you start thinking that you can now kind of guess what a specific could be about or you expect at least that nothing could serve as a cause of your jaw drop. This book proved me wrong! This author proved me wrong. He proved that other worlds and universes exist and within our own very little place in universe, there are things we haven't yet grabbed the meaning of. Very very well written. Must read for everyone and anyone who loves reading.

This is a crazy read!

Having gotten my hands on Kafka on the Shore, I couldn't put it down and read it through the night. This time, Haruki Murakami’s sorcery and magic are unleashed with such force that it's impossible to resist.

This novel follows the story of a young boy named Kafka Tamura, who, under the weight of his father's sinister curse, takes a night bus to Takamatsu and finds work in a small library in the suburbs. What secrets does the extraordinary librarian Oshima harbor? Is the beautiful librarian Saeki really Tanaka's mother? Will he truly fulfill the Oedipal prophecy of sleeping with his mother and sister, killing his father?

It can be seen as a mind-boggling dream, in which horrific events unfold inexorably. As the dream ends, our world is also transformed along with it. All these bizarre incidents are narrated in Murakami's characteristically neutral and gentle tone, with a wealth of details that are vivid and lifelike yet restrained and not overly embellished. When I finish reading, I can't help but ask: Is this really a dream?

In many of his works, Murakami frequently mentions the concept of "the edge of the world." What is the edge of the world?

To escape the police, Oshima drives at high speed, taking Tanaka to a cabin at the edge of the forest, accompanied by Schubert's piano sonatas. This cabin, I could say, is the edge of our "normal" world. Here, shadows gradually envelop, and another world begins to emerge, hidden deep within the vast forest. What is that world? Hell? Death? Original sin? The unconscious?

This is the forest that Dante Alighieri trembled before in The Divine Comedy, and the dark pine forest where Nathaniel Hawthornes Goodman Brown discovered his wife's secret. Even in an extended sense, it is the Norwegian Forest that seduced Watanabe and swallowed up Naoko, deep, dark, and terrifyingly beautiful. It is because Tanaka Kafka has been far removed from the hustle and bustle of the world that he is able to wander on the edge of the world, finally breaking through the boundaries at all costs, returning to the womb, comprehending the truth, facing his own sins, and reaching the heart of darkness.

The other parallel line in the novel tells the story of the strange old man Nakata, who is as innocent and pure as a child. Due to war trauma, he has lost all his memories and lives a very simple life on a meager pension, even unable to buy tram tickets. However, he can understand cat language and can summon fish and leeches to fall from the sky. Nakata is also a figure who wanders on the edge of the world. His brain is a vast void, and it is precisely because of this that he is closer to the truth than anyone else, or rather, he is the truth.

Unable to bear the cruel torture of cats by someone who calls himself Johnny Walker, Nakata kills him and embarks on a journey to close the gates of the world. This line is closely linked to Tanaka's inner journey. Nakata faces the cruelty and evil of the external world, while Tanaka faces the temptations and sins of the heart. In the end, these two lines converge in Takamatsu. External sin and internal sin, are these not two sides of the same coin?

It is precisely on this point that Kafka on the Shore is both a fantasy myth and a work that faces reality. The question is, can external sin be ended with a sharp knife, and is internal sin so easily erased?

On the surface, Kafka Tamura seems to be stronger and braver than Oedipus Rex, who only knows how to escape, while Tanaka dares to take the initiative to break through the barriers and go straight into the forbidden zone. However, the overcoming of sin is also the completion of sin. The core of this eternal tragic fate has not changed much in the two thousand years since then.

Perhaps Murakami’s meaning can be understood in this way: we are all lost souls, and there is no salvation that is pure and perfect. The important thing is that we are on our way. Perhaps.

Crazy Murakami. But honestly, it is his unique blend of realism, fantasy, and philosophical exploration that completely captivated me.

5 / 5 stars

My other reviews of Murakami's Work:
The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Norwegian Wood
1Q84
Hear the Wind Sing
Kafka on the Shore
Sputnik Sweetheart
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
South of the Border, West of the Sun
After Dark

[Revised 3/20/23]

Although translated from Japanese, this work pays homage to Western culture in its title and in its constant references to Greek mythology. Much of the plot is Oedipus. We also hear a lot about western music such as the Beatles, classic Hollywood films like Casablanca, and symbols of western consumerism such as Colonel Sanders and Johnny Walker.



A motherless teenage boy kills his despotic father and runs away. Well, maybe he did kill him, maybe he didn’t.  It looks more like a 'stand-in' for the boy – a mentally challenged older man who talks to animals - perhaps killed his father.  

The boy hides out in a library and at a remote rural cottage. The runaway boy acquires a new best friend who is transgendered. Meanwhile the boy may or may not have had sex with not only his mother, but his long-lost sister as well.

The plot is propelled by magical realism. It rains fish, for example, so it’s hard to tell what is real and what is mythical.

Prophecy, fate, predestination and reincarnation are the themes in this book that the New Yorker characterized as “an insistently metaphysical mind-bender.” A bit slow at times, but it kept my interest.



With almost half-a-million ratings on GR, Kafka is Murakami’s second most popular book by ratings and reviews on GR. First is Norwegian Wood, then Kafka, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and 1Q84. The first three of these are all highly rated on GR - above 4.0.

Top photo from nbcnews.com
The author from japan-forward.com

How does he do this?? Haruki Murakami. He writes these crazy freaking weird-ass stories that are so bizarre and out there and yet they are so, so, sooooo good.

It's insane. Where does he get his ideas from and how does he make the outlandish seem not just possible, but normal?

That's the weirdest thing -- as weird as they are, the stories sound legit. 100% realistic.  As my friend Hanneke said, "You just let the story wash over you and not wonder whether the 'possibilities'... are magical or not. "

You're sitting there reading and some old dude starts having a conversation with a cat - a literal, two-sided conversation - and instead of going, "Whoa, wait a minute, this can't happen!", your brain just accepts that it can and it does and it is. It just fits so well into the story that it's not at all crazy for some old dude to have a literal conversation with a cat.

And then it starts raining sardines and mackerels and leeches. Shiny, scaly fish and slithery slimy leeches pour from the sky and no one bats an eye! 

Then in walks the teenage ghost of a fifty-year old woman who's still alive and same thing. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.

All of this and more happens in Kafka on the Shore. It tells the story of a young kid who runs away from home to escape a curse his father put upon him. The characters make this book. There is young Kafka and there is the old man who converses with cats, and then of course the cats themselves. 

There are the librarians, one of whom has the ghost of her younger self wandering through the book. 

There is the truck driver who decides to help Old-Man-Who-Talks-With-Cats and who is every bit as interesting as the other characters even though he's perhaps the most normal. 

There is Colonel Sanders, yep, the guy from KFC. He pimps philosophy-majoring prostitutes. There are soldiers who never age. There are a whole host of weird and eccentric and unbelievable - yet 100% believable - characters.

This is my fifth Haruki Murakami book and it is my favourite so far. It is fantastical and philosophical and fun.

I won't go into the plot... it's as weird as the characters. But damn! What a book! If you're a fan of Murakami, you do not want to miss this one. And if you've never read him before, I think this is the one to start with. (Ironically, I've said that with each of his books I've read.) 

Just pick one and read it. Any one.

با خوندنش از شر یه شاهکار فوق‌العاده خلاص شدم! باوجود اینکه همه موراکامی رو یه نویسنده تووی سبک رئالیسم جادویی میشناسن ولیکن این اثر بیشتر شبیه یه حالت خاصی از سورئال هست ..یه جور رئالیسم دست و پا شکسته و یجور سو رئالیسم ملال اور .. کتاب یه روایت موازی از دوتا شخصیت اصلی رو دنبال میکنه با این حال من میتونم قسم بخورم که موراکامی حداکثر تلاشش رو کرده تا اسم پنج نوع برند اتومبیل ..چند تا برند لباس زیر و کفش ..اسم لااقل ده تا نویسنده ار ژانر ای مختلف .. اسم پنج تا موزیسین بزرگ ..حداقل ده تا واژه تخصصی تووی هنر ..تعریف موومان و تفاوت سمفونی و سونات .. و کلی اطلاعات بی ربط دیگه رو تووی اثرش بگنجونه ..یه جور اظهار فضل ادبی ..درصورتی که نویسنده های اصیل و باهویت معمولا کمتر این مدلی دست به خودکشی میزنن .. کتاب هم زیباست هم زشت ..شخصیت ناکاتا فوق‌العاده خوب پرداخت شده و شخصیت‌ پسر زاعی نام بد جوری تووی ذوق میزنه .. اگر درصد مالیخولیای خون تون کم شده میتونید روی این اثر زیبا حساب کنید ...

Is Your Figure Less Than Greek?

Early in "Kafka on the Shore”, the 15 year old narrator, Kafka Tamura, warns us that his story is not a fairy tale. The book's title is also the name of a painting and of a song mentioned in the novel, and it describes the one photo Kafka's father has kept in his drawer. But what Kafka neglects to tell us is that his story is a myth of epic, ancient Greek proportions.

Murakami has concocted a contemporary blend of Oedipus and Orpheus, East and West, Freud and Jung, Hegel and Marx, Tales of Genji and Arabian Nights, Shinto and Buddhism, abstraction and action, alternating narratives and parallel worlds, seriousness and play, not to mention classical, jazz and pop music.

Conceived as a sequel to "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World”, it quickly took on a life of its own, and now sits somewhere between that work and "1Q84”.

If you had to identify Murakami’s principal concerns as a writer, I would venture two: the transition from adolescence to adulthood, and the dynamic encounter between consciousness (the ego) and the subconscious (the id).

There are elements of both in "Kafka” . Thus, it stands as quintessential Murakami.




The book I read.


Search for the Other Half

Like Greek theatrical masks that represent tragedy and comedy, life consists of dualities: "Light and dark. Hope and despair. Laughter and sadness. Trust and loneliness.”

As hypothesised by Aristophanes via Plato, each individual is half what it once was apart, perhaps, from the character, Oshima. Our shadow is faint or pale. Murakami urges:

"You should start searching for the other half of your shadow.”

Beware of Darkness

Only, it’s easier said than done. We’re all "like some little kid afraid of the silence and the dark.”

We are "seeking and running at the same time.”

As in fairy tales, friends warn Kafka not to venture too far into the woods.

The irony is that the darkness is not so much outside, but inside. It’s in our subconscious. What terrifies us is "the inner darkness of the soul…the correlation between darkness and our subconscious”.

The woods, the forest are just a symbol of darkness, our own darkness.

In Dreams Begin Responsibility

While we’re awake, while we’re conscious, we think we’re rational, we’re in control, we can manage what happens around us.

However, we fear dreams, because we can’t control and manage them. By extension, we’re also skeptical of the imagination, because it is more analogous to dreaming than thinking.

Yet, we need our imagination almost as much as our logic. Murakami quotes Yeats:

"In dreams begin responsibility.”

It’s in this quandary that Kafka finds himself. It’s problematical enough for an adult, let alone a 15 year old who has lost contact with his mother and older sister at the age of four, and has now run away from his father:

"You're afraid of imagination. And even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the responsibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep, and dreams are a part of sleep. When you're awake you can suppress imagination. But you can't suppress dreams.”

For the Time Being

As would befit a Greek tragedy, Kafka’s father, a renowned sculptor, has prophesied:

"Some day you will murder your father and be with your mother…and your sister.”

This is the Oedipus myth, at once a curse and a challenge for Kafka:

"You're standing right up to the real world and confronting it head-on.”

We can only stand by and watch. What is happening? Does it really happen? Does it only happen in the labyrinth of Kafka’s imagination? Is the boy called Crow Kafka’s friend or his soul? Murakami mentions that "Kafka" is the Czech word for "crow", although apparently the Czech word "kavka" actually means "jackdaw". Is the old man Nakata a real person or his alter ego?

If Kafka can only prevail, he will become an adult. If nothing bad happens to him, he’ll emerge part of a brand new world.

It’s not enough for Kafka to spend the time being. He must act.

Reason to Act

Of course, there is a cast of surreal cats, crows and characters who contribute to the colour and dynamic of the novel.

One of my favourites is a Hegel-quoting whore (a philosophy student who might both feature in and read the novels of Bill Vollmann!), who counsels:

"What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts."

Although the protagonists of Murakami's novels are youthful, if not always adolescent, they are rarely in a state of stasis or arrested development. They're always endeavouring to come to terms with the past and embrace the future:

"The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future."

We observe them when their lives are most challenging and dynamic, in short, when they're trying to find and define themselves:

"Every object's in flux. The earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place for ever."




My photo of the artwork on a power box I pass every day on my walk.


If I Run Away, Will My Imagination Run Away With Me, Too?

Murakami’s ideas about imagination, dreams and responsibility are fleshed out in a scene that adverts to the Nazi Adolf Eichmann.

The character Johnnie Walker who might be the negative side of Kafka’s father kills cats, so that he can turn them into flutes. He challenges Nakata a stand-in for Kafka? to kill him to save the cats. Nakata now has a moral dilemma as to whether to kill a person to save the lives of others albeit cats.

Eichmann was the builder rather than the architect behind the design of the Holocaust. He was an officious conformist who lived and worked routinely without imagination. Hannah Arendt would describe him and his capacity for evil in terms of its banality. Others would call him a “Schreibtischmörder” or “desk murderer”.

In Murakami’s eyes, responsibility is part morality, but it also reflects an empathy with others, a transcendence of the self. Eichmann was too selfish and too conformist to empathise with the Jews he was trying to exterminate.

A Catastrophe is Averted by Sheer Imagination

After an accident in World War II, Nakata realised that he could talk to cats. Ultimately, he empathised with them enough to kill Johnnie Walker.

In Shinto, cats might be important in their own right. However, Murakami frequently uses cats in his fiction. Perhaps they represent other people in society, people we mightn't normally associate with or talk to, In which case cats might symbolise the underdog? but who watch over us and might perhaps be wiser than us, if only we would give them credit?

Murakami also criticised two women bureaucrats who visited the library for their officious presumption and lack of imagination, albeit in a good cause.

For Murakami, the imagination is vital to completing the self, bonding society and oiling the mechanisms by which it works, but it is also an arena within which the psychodrama of everyday life plays out and resolves.

Inside the Storm

So what can I tell you about Kafka’s fate? Only what Murakami tells us on page 3:

"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm...is you. Something inside of you.

"So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in...There's no sun..., no moon, no direction, no sense of time…[in] that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm…

"And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.”

Unless you’re a total Murakami sceptic, when you close this book for the last time, you too won’t be the same person who walked in.




http://www.deviantart.com/fanart/?vie...


VERSE:

Kafka in the Rye (Or Catcher on the Shore)

Kafka sees a ghost,
One he’ll soon love most,
Somehow he has learned
She has just returned
Home from sailing by
Seven seas of Rhye.
If only Kafka
Could one day catch her,
Dressed, in the rye or,
What he’d like much more,
How his heart would soar,
Catch her on the shore,
Idly walking by,
Naked to the eye.

Swept Away
[In the Words of Murakami]

I am swept away,
Whether I like it or not,
To that place and time.

Where There Are Dreams
[In the Words of Murakami]

The earth moves slowly.
Beyond details of the real,
We live our dreams.

Metaphysician, Heal Thyself
[In the Words of Murakami]

You can heal yourself.
The past is a shattered plate
That can't be repaired.

The Burning of Miss Saeki's Manuscript
[In the Words of Murakami]

Shape and form have gone.
The amount of nothingness
Has just been increased.

Look at the Painting, Listen to the Wind
[In the Words of Murakami]

You did the right thing.
You're part of a brand new world.
Nothing bad happened to you.





SOUNDTRACK:

Strummer - "Kafka on the Shore"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iM2z...

Prince - "Little Red Corvette"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDduq...

Prince - "Sexy Motherfucker"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d2Vb...

R.E.M. - "I Don't Sleep, I Dream"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WReb...

Cream - "Crossroads"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-6OW...

Cream - "Crossroads" [Live]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OLK_...

Cream - "Crossroads" [Live at the Royal Albert Hall 2005]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX6J5...

The Beatles - "Hello Goodbye"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkH3P...

Otis Redding - Sitting on the Dock of the Bay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCmUh...

Duke Ellington - "The Star-Crossed Lovers"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg4MP...

Johnny Hodges on Alto Sax

John Coltrane - "My Favorite Things"t

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWG2d...

Stan Getz - "Getz/Gilberto"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KpIV...

Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II - "Edelweiss"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYSw0...

Frank Churchill & Larry Moery - "Heigh-Ho"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzjXR...

Puccini - "Si, mi chiamano Mimi" from "La Boheme" [Marija Vidovic]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDc0v...

Mozart - "Serenade in D major, K. 320 "Posthorn" [Mackerras]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS5YC...

Haydn - Cello Concerto in C Major [Han-na Chang]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8uCT...

Franz Schubert - "Piano Sonata in D major"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh6ax...

Beethoven - "Piano Trio No.7 in B Flat Major, Op.97" ["Archduke Trio"]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWPdl...

Kashfi Fahim - "Life in Technicolor"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go_Z1...

A short film that features the sandstorm quote.

Between Dream and Reality, Haruki Murakami takes us on a journey with Kafka, a fifteen-year-old boy who, abandoned by his mother, fled a father prophesying that, like Oedipus, his son would be guilty of parricide and incest.
His path will cross that of astonishing characters, such as an androgynous librarian, or of Nakata, an older man with a simple mind, speaking the language of cats, with whom he walks on the road to discovering himself- same and its truth.
It is a potent and completely addicting novel about memory, literature, music, nature, death, etc. One finds it expected to see fish fall or hear cats talk.
That's a dreamlike universe for an extraordinary initiatory journey that we would like never to end.

شوف يا موراكامي يا ابني .. أنا مش فاهم انت بتقول إيه ..
بس أنا موافق ✋

I kept hoping it gets better. It took me so long to read and made me watch tv shows instead of reading.. call me shallow or whatever you want but this book is trying to be philosophical and deep too hard. Too much details, too many things were mentioned and didn’t affect the plot (uhm wait what plot) in any way. We still didn’t get any explanation on some bizarre events/characters. A few events were just too disturbing and not in a good way. I honestly wanted to give it 2 stars but then realized there’s nothing that affected me in Kafka on the shore -which was the whole point of this boring book. I very much struggled to finish it. I guess people who like this genre might enjoy it more. So really, it depends on one’s preference (obviously). Since I liked 1Q84, this wont be my last Murakami but I doubt I’ll be reading another anytime soon.

دعك من السماء التي تمطر سمكا ومن القطط التي تتكلم بل ومن ناكاتا الذي يحدثهم استمتع بالحكي والأحداث الغرائبية فيها ككل ما قرأت من قبل فالطالما قرأنا أغرب منها فلا تحاول أن تمنطق اللامنطق مع هذا العمل تحديدا لن تجني إلا الفشل وستظل عاجزا عن الفهم
ولكن تعال هنا .. واستمتع بفلسفة هذا الياباني الفذ اقرأ بعينك وبقلبك بل إقرأ بخيالك وافتح أبواب عقلك على مصراعيها فأروع ما ستجد هنا لا يُقرأ فالرسائل مشفرة تخاطب إحساسك وسعة خيالك وعقلك والمقروء منها ممتع .. عجيب .. مجنون .. ساحر لا يُفسر ولا تطبق عليه قواعد الشرح والدروس المستفادة
لهذه الرواية أوجه عدة قد تراها عبثية .. سيريالية خالية من أي قيمة فأعلم وقتها أنها ليست لك
وقد تراها عميقة فلسفية راقية
أو تراها خبيثة بفلسفة شيطانية شاذة
..اما إذا أردت لها تفسيرا منطقيا فأستطيع أن أقول انها ....
ولكن تذكر إني قلت ربما
ربما تكون رحلة للبحث عن الذات فأوجد أنت ذاتك منها
وربما تكون فلسفة عن الروح والجسد
أو قد تكون حشد للكثير من الأفكار الإنسانية غُلفت بسرد خيالي ممزوج بالواقع بحرفية شديدة جدا وحوارات منها الجاد والمعرفي والفلسفي والطريف ورسم بالغ الدقة لأبطالها ممتع لكل عاشق للأدب
.ربما ...
أتعلمون ربما تكون تفريغ حلم للسيد موراكامي وهو نائم على التاتمي !!
أكيد هذا الرجل له أحلاما ليست كأحلامنا أعتقد أنه في تكوينه الشخصي لا يختلف عن أبطاله
وإلا لما كتب هذه الرواية
وربما من الأفضل أن لا تشغل نفسك بالتفسير
ومن يستطيع تفسير رواية ظهر فيها الكولونيل ساندرز وجوني واكر وسماءا تمطر سردين ومجنون يأكل قلوب القطط وأجن منه يحدثهم
وهو نفس الشخص الذي تكلم عن عشق الكتب والمكتبات وعن موسيقى بيتهوفن وعبقرية هايدن وعن تاريخ اليابان الثقافي وحضارتهم من قبل الميلاد وحتى عصرنا هذا وعن حملات نابليون على روسيا
من يستطيع أن يمزج كل هذا بين دفتي كتاب دون أن يطولك الملل لحظة
( رغم انك مش فاهم حاجات كتير ومفيش أمل تفهم لكن مبسوط :) )
غير كاتب غير تقليدي .. محترف .. فنان .. فيلسوف .. مجنون
أنه الياباني الفذ هاروكي موراكامي ..
وقد قالها الرائع توفيق الحكيم ..
الحلم هو العالم العلوي الذي لا يدخله حيوان الخيال هو تاج السيادة والسمو الذي تميز به الإنسان ..
فقط إقرأها وابحث عن أي من شطآن موراكامي سيختار عقلك ليرسوا عليها .

What a load of silly, waffly, pretentious old fluff.

Really?
What just happened? Who? What? I’m sorry, what?

This is how it starts:
“You’re going to love this book.” Someone says to someone else. “I loved this book, and I know you’re going to love this book.”

Someone said this to my friend, and she read the book, and she thought, “eh.”

But there were more people out there. They love this book! This book is the book that will change everything! If they were to build a time machine and travel back in time with several copies of this book, and if they were to give copies of this book to Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, and Ishmael then there would be absolutely no problems in the Middle East. There would be no homeless. Unicorns would run free through fields of grass. We’d all have universal health care.

“A friend of mine gave me this book. Matt really likes this book. Joe really likes this book. I thought it was ‘eh’. But maybe you’ll like it.” She said as she handed me the book.

So I read it. And I’m inclined to agree with the woman who gave it to me. It’s “eh”. Kafka is a young kid looking for something that’s been missing in his life. It maybe his mother, but that’s really just a metaphor. Then there’s this simpleton old man who can talk to cats. Then there’s this secret world in the mountains. Then there’s a magical stone. Then Godzilla, then a comet hits Mars and we all grow a third arm. I felt as if the story spiraled out of control, maybe. I think part of the problem is that Karuki Murakami doesn’t write in English, and I can’t read Japanese, and while I’m sure Philip Gabriel is a perfectly nice man, and can translate Japanese into English perfectly well, I still felt like there was something lost in the translation while reading the book. So, IF I were to suggest you read this book, I would first suggest you learn to read Japanese, then maybe spend some years in Japan. Then read the book. Then write me and tell me what you thought of it. Cause for me- it’s a little too metaphor-y, and at the end of the book, all I could think was, “Really?”