Note: This meeting is on Monday.
Book Discussion: Kafka on the Shore (海辺のカフカ Umibe no Kafuka) is a 2002 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Its 2005 English translation was among "The 10 Best Books of 2005" from The New York Times. It's been described as real page-turner, as well as an insistently metaphysical mind-bender
It is written in Japanese but is available in English, Vietnamese, Korean and many other language translations.
Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between both plots, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters.
The odd-numbered chapters tell the 15-year-old Kafka's story as he runs away from his father's house to escape an abusive father and to embark upon a quest to find his mother and sister. After a series of adventures, he finds shelter in a quiet, private library in Takamatsu, run by the distant and aloof Miss Saeki and the intelligent and more welcoming Oshima. There he spends his days reading the unabridged Richard Francis Burton translation of One Thousand and One Nights and the collected works of Natsume Sōseki until the police begin inquiring after him in connection with a brutal murder.
The even-numbered chapters tell Nakata's story, an illiterate older man. Due to his uncanny abilities, he has found part-time work in his old age as a finder of lost cats (Murakami's earlier work The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle also involves searching for a lost cat). The case of one particular lost cat puts him on a path that ultimately takes him far away from his home, ending up on the road for the first time in his life. He befriends a truck driver named Hoshino, who takes him on as a passenger in his truck and soon becomes very attached to the old man.
Bizarre things happen. The spiritual world mixes with the mundane world and it's often hard to tell what really is happening. It's a fun, delightful and thought provoking story.
