Kafka on the Shore - SIGNED

Haruki Murakami; translated by Philip Gabriel (James Philip Gabriel)

ISBN 10: 1843432684 / ISBN 13: 9781843432685

Published by The Harvill Press, London, 2005

Limited first edition in English. 8vo. Pp. [vi], 505, [1]. Cream cloth, lettered in black to spine; decorated endpapers. Housed in a black cloth slipcase. Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, winner of the 2006 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for this effort. Originally published as Umibe no Kafuka in 2002, in a two-volume set by Shinchosha Publishing Co. Ltd, Tokyo. #242/1000 copies signed in English by the author on a tipped-in bookplate. Author's tenth novel. Winner of the 2006 Franz Kafka Prize as well as a 2006 World Fantasy Award. Named as one of the Best Five Fiction Books of the Year in 2005 by the New York Times. Incorporating musical motifs, metaphysics, and the subconscious, an exploration of mythic and contemporary taboos in which a teenage boy's flight from his Oedipal curse crosses paths with an ageing simpleton bearing a wartime affliction. According to Murakami, the secret to understanding this complex novel lies in reading it several times: "Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape." "[A] real page-turner, as well as an insistently metaphysical mind-bender." -John Updike, The New Yorker. 1018. Seller Inventory # Y98 R2Y

Synopsis:

Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable 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.

Review: The opening pages of a Haruki Murakami novel can be like the view out an airplane window onto tarmac. But at some point between page three and fifteen--it's page thirteen in Kafka On The Shore--the deceptively placid narrative lifts off, and you find yourself breaking through clouds at a tilt, no longer certain where the plane is headed or if the laws of flight even apply.

Joining the rich literature of runaways, Kafka On The Shore follows the solitary, self-disciplined schoolboy Kafka Tamura as he hops a bus from Tokyo to the randomly chosen town of Takamatsu, reminding himself at each step that he has to be "the world¹s toughest fifteen-year-old." He finds a secluded private library in which to spend his days--continuing his impressive self-education--and is befriended by a clerk and the mysteriously remote head librarian, Miss Saeki, whom he fantasizes may be his long-lost mother. Meanwhile, in a second, wilder narrative spiral, an elderly Tokyo man named Nakata veers from his calm routine by murdering a stranger. An unforgettable character, beautifully delineated by Murakami, Nakata can speak with cats but cannot read or write, nor explain the forces drawing him toward Takamatsu and the other characters.

To say that the fantastic elements of Kafka On The Shore are complicated and never fully resolved is not to suggest that the novel fails. Although it may not live up to Murakami's masterful The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Nakata and Kafka's fates keep the reader enthralled to the final pages, and few will complain about the loose threads at the end. --Regina Marler

Bibliographic Details

Title: Kafka on the Shore - SIGNED
Publisher: The Harvill Press, London
Publication Date: 2005
Binding: Hardback
Condition: As new
Dust Jacket Condition: No jacket
Signed: signed
Edition: Limited first edition in English.