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"Kafka on the Shore" Author: [Japanese] Haruki Murakami Publisher: Shanghai Translation Publishing House Original title: Kafka on the Shore
"Kafka on the Shore" Author: [Japanese] Haruki Murakami Publisher: Shanghai Translation Publishing House Original title: Kafka on the Shore
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Description
Introduction · · · · · ·
The protagonist of the novel is a boy who calls himself Kafka Tamura—the author never reveals his real name. He ran away from home on the eve of his fifteenth birthday and took a night long-distance bus to Shikoku. The reason for running away was to escape his father's prophecy, which was more terrible than Oedipus Rex: you will kill your father and have sex with your mother and sister. When Kafka was four years old, his mother suddenly disappeared, taking away his sister, who was four years older than Kafka and was actually the adopted daughter of the Tamura family, and for some reason abandoned her own son. He had never seen a photo of his mother, and he didn't even know her name. As if fate was guiding him, he accidentally came to a private library and lived there. The director, Ms. Saeki, was a beautiful woman in her forties with an elegant temperament and a mysterious life story. Kafka suspected that she was his biological mother, but Saeki did not comment on it. Kafka fell in love with Saeki and had a physical relationship with her. The novel also has another subplot, the protagonist of which is the old man Nakata. When he was in elementary school during World War II, he experienced a mysterious coma and lost his memory. He completely forgot what he had learned and could not even read or count, but he gained the mysterious ability to talk to cats. Nakata killed a madman who called himself Johnny Walker and dressed like the British gentleman on the famous whiskey label. He also came here by hitchhiking. The novel is divided into 49 chapters. The odd-numbered chapters basically tell Kafka's story in a realistic way, while the even-numbered chapters use magical methods to show Nakata's adventures. The two methods are used alternately to weave a modern fable with a strong fictional color and fantasy. Saeki is the junction that connects the two stories into one, and the prophecy of patricide seems to be unavoidable in the end, because the madman Johnny Walker is actually Kafka's biological father in disguise, and the real murderer is not Nakata...
About the Author · · · · · ·
Haruki Murakami (1949- ) is a Japanese novelist. He studied at the Department of Drama, Faculty of Literature, Waseda University. In 1979, his first novel, "Hearing the Wind Song", was adapted into a film. Subsequently, his excellent works such as "Pinball in 1973", "A Sheep Chase", and "Norwegian Wood" were published one after another. His creations are not bound by tradition, with novel ideas and free and easy writing, but not vulgar and shallow. Especially in the portrayal of people's loneliness and helplessness, he has more characteristics. He did not write this emotion as a negative thing, but sublimated it into an elegant style and a state of enjoyment through inner mental operations, so as to provide readers, especially those living in cities, with a lifestyle or life experience.
!["Kafka on the Shore" Author: [Japanese] Haruki Murakami Publisher: Shanghai Translation Publishing House Original title: Kafka on the Shore](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)