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This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle-yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.
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Previews available in: Chinese German English
Subjects
Self-actulaization (Psychology), Fiction, Miscellanea, Japanese Authors, Runaway teenagers, Parent and child, Japan, fiction, Near and far eastern fiction (fictional works by one author), Japanese fiction, Translations into Chinese, Chang pian xiao shuo, Eccentrics and eccentricities, Detective and mystery stories, New York Times reviewed, Korean language materials, Runaways, Juvenile fiction, Teenage boys, Fiction, general, Self-actualization (Psychology)Times
xian dai, 20th centuryShowing 8 featured editions. View all 46 editions?
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Translation of: Umibe no Kafuka. Based on the English translation by Philip Gabriel, Kafka on the shore.
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Work Description
A boy trying to escape a gruesome oedipedal prophecy, a simple man who can talk to cats, a mysterious librarian, and a woman waiting for a long-dead lover.
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- Created July 16, 2019
- 3 revisions
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July 29, 2021 | Edited by Lisa | Merge works |
October 5, 2019 | Edited by Camillo Pellizzari | merge authors |
July 16, 2019 | Created by MARC Bot | Imported from marc_openlibraries_sanfranciscopubliclibrary MARC record |