It also won the World Fantasy Award. Murakami's fiction is frequently nihilistic and surrealistic, marked with a rendition of ideals of alienation and loneliness. He is regarded as a prominent name in postmodern literature. Haruki Murakami was born in Japan on January 12, He studied drama at Waseda University, Tokyo, and initially worked at a record shop. He has even translated a large number of works in English to Japanese. His books on nonfiction and fiction have got numerous awards and critical acclaim, both internationally, and in Japan.
He is a triathlete enthusiast and marathon runner. Murakami is married to Yoko. Certified Buyer , Barrackpore. Certified Buyer , Garulia.
Certified Buyer , Pathankot District. Certified Buyer , Pune. Certified Buyer , Rourkela. Certified Buyer , Durgapur. Certified Buyer , Edavanna. Explore Plus. Fiction Books. General Fiction Books. Enter pincode. Usually delivered in 3 days? Murakami Haruki. NSPRetail 3. Summary Of The Book The odd chapters of Kafka On The Shore depict the story of year-old Kafka as he leaves his father's house in search of his sister and mother, and also to escape from an Oedipal curse.
Frequently Bought Together. Kafka on the Shore. Norwegian Wood. The Handmaid's Tale. Add 3 Items to Cart. Rate Product. Mary Shelley. We use cookies to improve this site Cookies are used to provide, analyse and improve our services; provide chat tools; and show you relevant content on advertising. Yes Manage cookies. Cookie Preferences We use cookies and similar tools, including those used by approved third parties collectively, "cookies" for the purposes described below.
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Cancel Save settings. Bestselling Series. Harry Potter. Books By Language. Books in Spanish. Kafka on the Shore. By author Haruki Murakami.
Free delivery worldwide. There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle - one of many which combine to create an elegant and dreamlike masterpiece. A magnificently bewildering achievement Brilliantly conceived, bold in its surreal scope, sexy and driven by a snappy plot Exuberant storytelling. In , Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game.
That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year. Tokyo has inspired all manner of writers, from home and abroad, seeking to evoke its unique atmosphere over the years. Read an extract from the epic new novel by the internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of 1Q84, Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore.
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View all newsletter. For more on our cookies and changing your settings click here. Strictly Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. A challenging but also an amazing read. View all 13 comments. 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.
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. Our shadow is faint or pale. Murakami urges: "You should start searching for the other half of your shadow. The irony is that the darkness is not so much outside, but inside.
The woods, the forest are just a symbol of darkness, our own darkness. Yet, we need our imagination almost as much as our logic.
Murakami quotes Yeats: "In dreams begin responsibility. 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. What is happening? Does it really happen? If Kafka can only prevail, he will become an adult. 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! 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. 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.
He challenges Nakata view spoiler [a stand-in for Kafka? Nakata now has a moral dilemma as to whether to kill a person to save the lives of others view spoiler [albeit cats hide spoiler ]. 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.
Eichmann was too selfish and too conformist to empathise with the Jews he was trying to exterminate. 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, view spoiler [In which case cats might symbolise the underdog? 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. 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. Because this storm There's no sun When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. Beyond details of the real, We live our dreams. The past is a shattered plate That can't be repaired. The amount of nothingness Has just been increased. You're part of a brand new world.
Nothing bad happened to you. Mozart - "Serenade in D major, K. Beethoven - "Piano Trio No. A short film that features the sandstorm quote. View all 59 comments. Dec 16, Fabian rated it really liked it. The simplistic writing in "Kafka on the Shore" contrasts pretty sharply with the book's complicated themes. There are different levels of the mind, and after re The simplistic writing in "Kafka on the Shore" contrasts pretty sharply with the book's complicated themes.
But "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is better. Fish and eels dropping from the sky, talking with felines, interacting with spirits: all these are exciting elements to bring forth in a contemporary story.
Murakami takes us to a place which seems new, possibly surprising even him. Perhaps he discovered what his novel was all about all too late to establish for his readership an elegant conclusion. Also: what REAL fifteen year-old listens to jazz? I was not entirely convinced that the main character was all that naive, nor all that special. Bottom line: Very interesting all the way through, but not truly, ultimately, magnificent.
View all 10 comments. It's one of the most engaging and magical pieces of literature I've read. Reality is unclear. The book presses the boundaries of what exists around the characters versus what exists in their minds.
Powerful forces guide the characters--some known, some unknown. Odd things happen within the context of everyday Japan. Mackarel rains from the sky. A metaphysical overseer appears under the guise of Colonel Sanders; a villian under the guise of Johnny Walker. The forest contains ghosts. Everyday objects suddenly take on supernatural functions. Fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura runs away from home and finds himself in Takamastu, where he discovers a charming, privately owned public library to spend his days until things get complicated.
Turns out the events in his life--and possibly even his body--is intralinked with a man named Nakata. When Nakata was a child during World War II, a mysterious force in a field put him and several other schoolchildren in a coma, but Nakata's mind was the only one erased entirely.
As an adult, though mentally challenged, he has the ability to communicate with cats along with several other larger-than-life talents. Surreal forces draw Nakata, all which relate to Kafka Tamura's world.
The desk assistant at the library, who immediately befriends Kafka, often references mythology--these references all end up being manifestations of the characters and the plot itself. Because of this, in many ways the book mirrors the spirit of Franz Kafta's works how intentional these associations are by Murakami, I'm not sure.
I was drawn to this book for the mood that it presented. It opened my imagination and set my spirit spinning with possibilities and ideas. It's rare to find a story with this effect. The prose, as always by Murakami, grabs you from the get-go--it's charming, smooth, and intelligent without being pretentious.
An amazing read. View all 4 comments. Oct 03, Sid rated it it was amazing. 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 This was my first ever Murakami read. 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.
Actually I read it some time ago.. Didn't like it much : Thanks for the go ahead. Didn't like it much Thanks for sharing. Shelves: magical-realism , postmodern-meta , china-japan-asia , friendship-and-found-family , bildungsroman. Its most fundamental theme is the paradoxical nature of edges and boundaries literal, spiritual, ethical : that they can both separate and connect. The nature of connections and separation is tantalisingly opaque.
And yet they run Source The title The title refers to the lyrics of a fictional song and a picture of it. Every line has a word that is a key part of the novel.
This is far more subtle than the rather heavy-handed way the Oedipus myth is repeatedly referenced. Words without letters Standing in the shadow of the door. The moon shines down on a sleeping lizard, Little fish rain down from the sky. Outside the window there are soldiers, Steeling themselves to die. Kafka sits in a chair by the shore, Thinking of the pendulum that moves the world, it seems.
When your heart is closed. The shadow of the unmoving Sphinx Become a knife that pierces your dreams. Lifting the hem of her azure dress, She gazes — At Kafka on the shore. A place beyond the flow of time. But they also tear you apart. She and I are in two separate worlds, divided by an invisible border. View all 43 comments. Greg OR, both are half cats. Cecily Greg wrote: "Halfway through this book and I think Kafka's other half is either Nakata OR both of them have the same other half.
So I didn't read all of your review Apr 09, Lyn rated it really liked it. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami leaves the reader with more questions unanswered than are easily and superficially wound up in a mainstream fiction.
He references and alludes to Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, T Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami leaves the reader with more questions unanswered than are easily and superficially wound up in a mainstream fiction. He references and alludes to Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, T. Eliot, Western philosophy, Jungian synchronicity, and Eastern spiritualism. He also uses frank, earthy sexuality that is evocative of Norman Mailer or John Barth.
Murakami takes his easel deep into our subconscious psyche and paints a labyrinthine watercolor of the underside of our collective iceberg.
One way that I know that a book is good, great even, is that I know I will think about it after I have finished, and I have a firm belief that this book will come back to me, will stay with me, for some time.
This is a psychological quest, a spiritual journey — a profound and meaningful fantasy, distinct from the work of authors such as Neil Gaiman and China Mieville by his affinity for magic realism, his close but surreal connection to the modern. This magnificent work is a document from the borderlands between this world and another. View all 15 comments. Aug 03, Jeff rated it liked it Recommends it for: The noble Samurai warrior, or that indie guy who works at the used CD shop.
What just happened? 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 we Really? 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. Matt really likes this book. Joe really likes this book. So I read it. 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. 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. View all 11 comments. As long as it's shaped like a book and has printing, it's fine by me. I just want to hold a book in my hands, turn the pages, scan the words with my eyes. This is exactly when you should pick up this book.
But realistically speaking, pick up a Murakami book when you feel like everything else is so mundane and monotonous. Because you will read the same in his books but you will find the stories a bit t "As I gaze at the vacant, birdless scene outside, I suddenly want to read a book - any book.
Because you will read the same in his books but you will find the stories a bit too mundanely insane and silently outrageous. The malancholy of being alive just mirrors back in his writing. I would say this is a magical realism fiction. But I can see paranormal, gothic, crime, sci-fi, forbidden relationship, coming of age elements which played major parts in this one. I feel it's still alright if I cannot grasp the whole concept of this story but I could grasp the arguments and discussion regarding books, libraries, politics, history, wars, music and musicians, religion, gender discrimination, sexuality, mental health, death any important topic you name it, you find it discussed here though not that detailed sometimes but accurate.
The book starts and ends with a fifteen year old boy. A few other important characters will be introduced to you. They have their own chapters. These chapters alternate one another. But I will say that even if the story seems haphazard, it all came in a pretty good sequence. Until more than half of the book, you will be a bit lost as to how are all these characters connected in the plot as they seem so completely seem to be living in their own different worlds.
But yes, they are all connected and each character has an important role to play and each event described is important no matter how trivial it seems. I would say there are some disturbing moments described in details.
So I won't describe them here again. The book ended well and good. But you will still feel like you haven't grasp the whole concept of what happened in the entire story. Yes, Murakami's books make you feel like that. But what makes his books special is the way the writing makes you see the hidden dark parts of what we are capable of thinking, how imagination can go deeper and higher at the same time. Yes, I know you will find the characters disgusting and somehow as some kind of psychos for sure but yes, they do make you see the darkest corners of your mind.
Most of the time his words will spark your static brain, then makes you want to huddle in a room alone making you want to protect yourself from such broken characters, then makes you feel the warmth of having someone random who becomes close to you out of nowhere.
He makes me see what really matters. Even though I still will be living with the same fears and illusion I have made up for myself and as how everything made me see the reality, his books make me see the difference. And that's how Murakami makes me live differently with his books. View all 5 comments. Mar 29, Andrew Smith rated it it was amazing. In common with some of his other books, there are two stories here told in alternating chapters.
These eventually interlink to bring some clarity but not total clarity to the broader tale. It strikes me that the author is like a chef who is constantly using favourite ingredients to make a variety of meals; each meal has echoes of the others but the overall taste, the aggregate experience, is different. Of course, this isn't a prerequisite to ensure enjoyment of the authors text, but it does help dimwits like me.
Well, it might be Either way, I loved this book and would highly recommend it to seasoned Murakami aficionados or first time visitors to his mysterious and wonderful world - it's as good a place to start as anywhere. Aug 11, Dana Ilie rated it it was amazing Shelves: fantasy. Murakami has become a firm favourite of mine for his wonderful blend of the metaphysical and magical realism with ordinary life and people.
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