Kafka on the Shore (Vintage International) by Haruki Murakami (EPUB)

Description

Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s great storytellers at the peak of his powers.Here we meet a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who is on the run, and Nakata, an aging simpleton who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Well, this was impressive.I have read one other Haruki Murakami novel some years ago, that being Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and while I really enjoyed that book, this one I loved. And besides, I can feel echoes of that one in this one, and those kind of connections bring me great joy, whether I am projecting them or not.What to even say about this book? What to say about Haruki Murakami? His works have the interestingly dichotomous ability to mix feelings of the small and the large, the personal and the sweeping, the banal and the mystical. Often while reading I’ll find myself thinking… “What the f***?” And I can answer this only with the mantra: “No idea, it’s Murakami.” Some people maybe can’t get behind that and still enjoy the novel, but I love it. The bizarre occurs without explanation, and the dreamlike is commonplace. He leads you from one question to the next so effectively that even when you don’t circle back around for the answers, you’re having too much fun to mind.And Murakami’s sheer skill… His prose is excellent by default, and ranges into the beautiful. He paints a vivid picture without being overly descriptive, and he allows you to sink into a sort of flavor of a mood. There seems to be a very human understanding that bleeds through onto the page, and not just in his prose but in his character work. He taps into the heart of things, and reminds you why life’s simple pleasures are pleasures in the first place. This is a man who seems to truly live, a man who knows how to take his loves and interests and inject them into a story that sticks with you.Kafka on the Shore is at its heart the inexorable, tidal pulling of two disparate storylines. That of Kafka Tamura, 15-year-old runaway haunted by a dark prophecy, and that of Satoru Nakata, an old man who suffered a childhood affliction that left him… different. How these two stories interact and interweave will leave you feeling like you’re reading a riddle at times. Thematically he is playing with dreams, imagination, and responsibility. The darkness of the human subconscious. Ghosts. Memory. Time. Libraries…. Honestly, I find the book hard to capture in words, futile devices that they are. There were sections of it where I even doubted the reality of what I was reading. I mean, my favorite character in the book was probably Colonel Sanders. Do with that what you will.So much of this story takes place in that dark, ethereal labyrinth of your mind that it feels like you can only accurately explain half of it. And that second, unexplainable half is where the true magic lies. Which is, I believe, why I’m so drawn to his stories; they leave much to the imagination, and there is plenty leftover to ponder. Nothing is so tantalizing as the unknown, and Murakami understands that deeply. But as strange as the novel is at times, it really is beautiful. Emotionally effective, to say the least. I want to use the word gorgeous, even. The character work feels genuine, borderline romanticized. And the entire work is so intricately interwoven that it feels like the kind of thing you could jump right back into when you finish, which may have even been Murakami’s intention.If you can’t tell by the unfiltered praise, I loved this book. It belongs on my favorites shelf, I think. I don’t think it’s for everyone. It was overtly sexual in a way that caught me off guard, and in a way that I can imagine will make some readers uncomfortable. There are also scenes of overt, sometimes shocking, violence. But I don’t fault Murakami for exploring the dark recesses of the human experience, or of stories in general. In fact, I think it would feel strange were those areas of darkness missing.Having just finished, I have that same sort of melancholic regret that I sometimes have when I finish a Ghibli movie; a long journey well-ended, characters coming full-circle with lessons learned, a strange new world that I want to stay in a little while longer. Needless to say, I’ll be reading more of his work.”Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there—to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there.”

⭐I’m a fan of surrealist, magical realist, and existentialist literature. I love the works of Kafka, Hesse, Schulz, Mann, Marquez, Carrington, and others. When I heard how lauded Haruki Murakami was for his surrealist or magical realist stories, I resolved to read them, beginning with his best work. Through some research, I found that Kafka on the Shore was consistently rated as his best. Reading it, I found that the book resembles literary fiction less than it does commercial genre fiction, particularly junior fiction, or young adult magical fantasy or supernatural thriller, with some implausible sexual fantasies added. The book is thoroughly engaging, and compels you to read through to the end to see how it is concluded, so in this way it is successful. But the tone of the book, and its prose and its metaphors, resemble the Percy Jackson or Harry Potter series more than anything by Kafka, Schulz, or Marquez. Kafka is evoked as one of many pop cultural references that are scattered throughout the book than through any close kinship to the Czech author’s style. The prose is a little too simple and clumsy and lacks the same linguistic or poetic magic as Marquez or Schulz. There may be a lot that is lost in translation from Japanese. The simplicity of the language also may be because the novel’s chief protagonists are a fifteen-year-old boy, a cognitively impaired man, and an uneducated truck driver, and to some degree we are forced to see the world through their eyes. But overall it sounded as if most of the book was narrated by a fifteen-year-old.True to form for magical realism, yes, a lot of magical events occur. Some of them successfully contribute to an atmosphere of strangeness and mystery, while others seem to be more superfluous or random, added for the purposes of cute whimsy, particularly in the middle of the book, when it seems that the author runs out of ideas. In a way that is not true to form for magical realism, though, the protagonists’ reactions to the magical events are always along the lines of remaking about how very strange the events are. Plus, there are plot points about magical stones that open portals to other worlds that have to be open and shut at the right times, and there are clever talking cats. All of this edges the story closer to fantasy fiction; characters in magical realist stories wouldn’t bat an eye at how unusual the occurrences are. However strange and implausible the magic is, though, none of them are any more implausible than the scenes in which the teenage protagonist interacts with the two main female characters, scenes that seem to be lifted straight out of adolescent male sexual fantasy, though to Murakami’s defense, this hints at the possibility that the story is happening in the mind of the teenage protagonist; or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it’s just the author’s fantasies; I have no idea.I think the novel could have done well without any magic at all. Murakami endows some of the main characters with such compelling and likable description (particularly the library clerk, the truck driver, and the cognitively impaired man) that it makes me wish that he simply had written a slice-of-life realist fiction novel about them.Overall, it’s a good book. If you want a book to take with you on a plane but you need a story with more depth than one about wizarding worlds, this is the one for you. If you’re looking for something along the lines of James Joyce or Franz Kafka, prepare for something a little more watered down than stories by those authors but still enjoyable.

⭐The voices in this audio version are excellent. This book is amazing, and I enjoyed getting to listen to it when I needed to work, cook, and clean, (in addition to reading the book), so I could get it read in time for book club. I recommend this audio book for any other book enthusiast. The story is wonderful and different, and fun to read or listen too (or both!).

⭐Auf deutsch schon zweimal gelesen, nach vielen Jahren nun mal auf englisch aufgefrischt,einfach klasse, die ganzen großen Themen des großen kleinen Japaners sind hier mit drin,für mich ist der Aufziehvogel zwar die Nummer1, aber Kafka ist nah dran!Nun ist es zwar blöd, einen Japaner auf englisch zu lesen, aber bei Murakami nicht ganz:Er schrieb oft zuerst auf englisch und hat dann ins Japanische zurück übersetzt, bevor er veröffentlichte,dadurch auch dieser typische Schreibstil. Vielleicht ist man also auf englisch ganz nah am Autoren?Außerdem sind die englischen Paperbacks meist sehr günstig und man tut was für sein eingerostetes Englisch.

⭐Not found.

⭐I came across this book quite by chance and decided to buy it on a whim. I’ve finished it right now, but I’m a bit confused. Maybe, as Nakata would say, I’m too dumb for this kind of book, but I don’t like it. The two stars are for the writing style, which was really nice (at the beginning I couldn’t put it down). But everything considered, I can’t find a real meaning to this book. It’s too complicated and I don’t understand why everything (the entrance stone, the murdering) has happened. It seems as if the characters can’t decide their life, and there are strong forces that guide them..Maybe the only problem is that this is not my genre.

⭐I cannot recommend this book enough. It is truly wonderful, captivating masterpiece. It draws you in like a magnet. I cannot remember the last time I so much wished that the story would not be over. I just wanted to stay forever in this fascinating, thought – provoking world that Murakami has painted.It is so sad that few people have nothing else to comment than about the size/volume etc. of this print. Don’t be mislead, this is a perfect pocket – size book, very easy to carry with you and read everywhere.This book is simply wonderful, don’t doubt it. Just take a deep breath and dive into the world where people can talk to the cats and truck drivers suddenly discover Beethoven.

⭐As an utter shock, it came as totally new, sealed in plastic wrap, though it is old 2005 edition! I guess they took it out from a cellar or old stock or something! Not even a scratch in the book!Good Job to the seller!Thanks

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