Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)

Genre: Foreign fiction
Year Published: 2002

Here are some of the things you will encounter in Kafka on the Shore: a malevolent spirit that takes the form of imaginary corporate spokesmen (e.g. Colonel Sanders), an Oedipal prophecy, a flute made out of the souls of cats, a magical town without memories, a murder committed via astral projection, and the nicest old man in the world.

It's a weird book. I'm not above tarring an entire nation with one brush, so let me say that it's a weird book in the tradition of Japan's often weird pop culture phenomena. That having been said, it's not weird for weirdness' sake, and there's much more to the book than its various oddities.

In short, the story is executed by telling alternate chapters from two points of view: the odd chapters are told in first person by Kafka Tamura, a young runaway who is escaping his father's cruelty. The even chapters are in the third person; they follow the adventures of an elderly man named Nakata who has only "half a shadow" due to a terrible incident during WWII. Over the course of the book, they both become entangled in a mystery involving an "entrance stone," a pop song, and a bereaved librarian, and each has his part to play in solving it.

Kafka is a good book, and it certainly kept me interested, but I have to admit that there were large swaths of plot that left me slightly baffled. Apparently I'm not alone in that feeling, either. Despite my lack of understanding, though, I'm glad I read it, if for no other reason than the window it provides into Japanese culture.

Recommended? Depends on whether you're the kind of person who's all right with open-ended books. If you are, then go for it.