How many pages kafka on the shore

Certified Buyer , Edavanna. Explore Plus. Fiction Books. General Fiction Books. Enter pincode. Usually delivered in 3 days? Murakami Haruki. NSPRetail 3. Summary Of The Book The odd chapters of Kafka On The Shore depict the story of year-old Kafka as he leaves his father's house in search of his sister and mother, and also to escape from an Oedipal curse. Frequently Bought Together. Kafka on the Shore. Norwegian Wood. The Handmaid's Tale. Add 3 Items to Cart.

Rate Product. But I have one little complain. Every time I order book from Flipkart I keep waiting for one new bookmark with beautiful bookmark. It's like been a special kind romance we are sharing, it's like a love letter from Flipkart to me. But this time there was no bookmark. Subarta Halder Certified Buyer , Barrackpore. My first murakami, oh wow how to describe this elegant literary work It was one hell of an experience.

Great service from flipkart delivered in two days. The book is authentic hence no question about it's quality. Simply can't wait to read it. My second book of Murakami after Norwegian Wood. Highly recommended. Pretty good deal. Dhwani Ajagia Certified Buyer. I was really looking forward for this book. Thank you flipkart for this amazing deal and fast delivary. The packaging and the quality of the book is really good, not a single scratch on it. Though I didn't got a bookmark but the price is worth of it.

Soumajit Das Certified Buyer , Garulia. I never liked magical realism but this book by Murakami changed my views. The premise is very very interesting and Murakami's writing grasps you completely. It is engrossing and at times confusing too but you enjoy the confusion.

Mind Blowing book. Was a bit let down by the end though. A sublime piece of writing which involves a heady mix of darkness, magic and the occasional thought provoking soliloquy.

He's a lovely fella. View all 26 comments. I can now add to that list, Haruki Murakami. Kafka is one of the most delicious meals I have ever been served. If I could, I would give this magnificent book six stars. Leading us on the journey of self-discovery is fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura. We join Kafka on his journey from runaway to enlightened being.

Our other guide is Mr. Nakata, who lives half in this world and half in a world not of his choosing. There is Oshima, who lives on the edge of genders. We meet Hoshino, whose eyes are opened to what he can be thru his interactions with Mr. Nakata, and who escapes his dead end reality and grows into a new one.

And lastly, Miss Saeki who has chosen to live in the past more than the present. Murakami introduces us to Zen and Buddhist philosophies, with a little Hinduism thrown in for good measure.

Like most brilliant pieces of literature, it was difficult to leave the world Murakami created. Rarely has a book satisfied me on so many levels. View all 23 comments. Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between both plots, taking up each plot-line in alternating chapters.

The odd-numbered chapters tell the year-old Kafka's story as he runs away from his father's house to escape an Oedipal curse 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.

The even-numbered chapters tell Nakata's story. They start with military reports of a strange incident in Yamanashi Prefecture where multiple children, including Nakata, collapse in the woods - Nakata, after the incident, is the only one of the children who came out of the incident without any memory and unable to read and write.

The incident is initially blamed on poisonous gas, but it is later revealed that it was the result of a lustful teacher beating Nakata. Later on in the book, it is shown that due to his uncanny abilities, Nakata has found part-time work in his old age as a finder of lost cats. Having finally located and returned one particular cat to its owners, Nakata finds that the circumstances of the case have put him on a path which, unfolding one step at a time before him, takes the illiterate man far away from his familiar and comforting home territory.

Nakata kills a man named Johnnie Walker, a cat murderer. He takes a gigantic leap of faith in going on the road for the first time in his life, unable even to read a map and without knowing where he will eventually end up. View all 22 comments. The name Kafka in the title unconventional and erudite 2. Kafka on the shore provides you exactly that.

One might feel being lost in a reverie and if you take a break from that you might ask yourself, OK…What the hell am I reading? But you go back to it like an adamant lover to his beloved. One start vying for more and more and begin questioning a lot many things because after all Truth is the source of most Fiction.

The theme constitutes of 2 worlds here, that of the living and of the dead and how both are connected to each other. Well leaving that apart, I loved this book and also I love how he brings mesmerizing music into his works and treat it with respect and dignity which I feel are the kind of recommendations on his part to his readers because undeniably music has a powerful effect on human lives.

And I know after having read two of his novels, I am going to love all his works inspite of their flaws because sometimes such surrender is pure bliss. View all 74 comments. Feb 20, K. Recommended to K.

Shelves: core. Definitely a page-turner! Once you start, you just keep on reading. Well, why do we stop reading a book? I think we can group the reasons into three: 1 Natural - work, eat, toilet, eyes are tired, other distractions, etc; 2 Boredom - the book or its part is boring; and 3 Need to Digest - sometimes I read a phrase or an idea and it is either hard to understand so I read several times or too beautiful that I want it to sink in and I want to remember it forever.

For my first Haruki Murakami bo Definitely a page-turner! For my first Haruki Murakami book, Kafka on the Shore , I could not put it down because there is never a boring part especially the first third and on a lesser degree, the second third.

I was expecting the last third to be the part where he should give the conclusion: tie up the many loose ends. All the while, that was the part where I though I should see his utter brilliance. He did not. He chose to let all ends hang loose. So, when I closed the book, I was groaning in front of my daughter.

That's it? Ganun na lang ba? So, I said, hmmm 3 stars. Then I remembered what Doris Lessing wrote in her introduction to The Golden Notebook that if a novel is not open for interpretation, it is a boring novel.

What makes a story interesting is if it open for interpretation and the more interpretations, the better. I am giving this a 5 star. But this book is not for everyone. If you are the type who asks questions like: so what happened to this character? Then don't ever lay your hand on this Murakami masterpiece. Stick with your John Grisham or Dean Koontz thrillers where everything is explained thoroughly to please your rationale mind. Most readers are like you anyway.

That's why those books sell more and they are always there occupying shelves and shelves of your nearby second-hand bookstore. Murakami, just like other literary masters, does not write to please. He seems not care about public reading preference but he puts in brilliance in his work and it is up to the readers to appreciate his talent. View all 34 comments.

Greg Chanii wrote: "What he drank didn't bother me as much as how he fucked. I didn't know sex could be so robotic and cold and such a total turn off. But maybe Kafka IS a cat? Would God be Colonel Sanders? Nov 10, Joel rated it really liked it Shelves: japan , murakami , cats , translated , , in , favorite-authors , day-book-challenge. When I awoke, I realized I had slept through the night.

But had it been a dream or not? It was impossible to tell. I got up, took a shower, brushed my teeth and shaved, paying special attention to my neck. When my face was again smooth and slightly pink from the razor, I went into the kitchen for breakfast. I washed down an English muffin and jelly with two cups of strong black coffee, no sugar added, and walked out onto the balcony. The sun was still creeping higher in the sky, struggling to bre When I awoke, I realized I had slept through the night.

The sun was still creeping higher in the sky, struggling to break through a heavy bank of clouds. I turned to see a small gray tabby cat, lounging on the next balcony over.

Even without a sunbeam to sleep in, he seemed to already be enjoying what promised to be another gray, humid day. I had never seen this cat before. Where did you come from? I don't like to think about such things. It's how I prefer to live my life. It is easier for me to speak to you if I know your name.

I don't need one. Why so serious? He was a very astute judge of character. Or at least mood. Would you like to hear about it? Our lives are so very interesting that we don't have much use for letting our imaginations wander during sleep.

In the first part of the dream, I was a teenage boy, recently run away from home due to a possibly abusive father. After traveling solo for several days, I came across a quaint little library operated by an odd man and a woman who seemed very familiar.

She reminded me of my mother, but then again, maybe she didn't. I was never quite sure on that score. When things got really obtuse was when he took me to an isolated cabin in the woods, where I started having vivid sexual dreams and visions of another world.

I could still talk to cats, but I couldn't read. I was actually looking for a lost cat when I met an evil man who liked to kill cats quite brutally, cutting them open while they were still alive. It was quite horrific. I suppose it is because we don't let them boss us around like mere dogs. I tried to tell the police but they wouldn't listen to me.

But then I felt compelled to leave town, and hitched a ride with a truck driver who took me a couple towns over. We didn't do too much along the way but I knew I had to keep looking for something.

The guy was really quite nice and interesting. Eventually we found that same library, and I talked with the woman and man, but the boy wasn't there. I wasn't sure if that was because he was another version of me or maybe because he was at the cabin. It was all very confusing. Like having nine lives, I bet. People just say cats have nine lives to justify their ill treatment of us. Continuing my dream, my truck driving friend found what we were looking for, which was this big rock, but I didn't really understand that part.

The man from Kentucky Fried Chicken helped him. Colonel Sanders was also a pimp and set the truck driver up with a beautiful college student who quoted Hegel. Come to think of it, there were other sex parts in the dream that I forgot to mention.

Quite a few, actually. Meanwhile, as the boy, I visited the underworld and met the ghost of the lady who worked at the library, even though she was still alive previously, or maybe not, because she was old and young at the same time. I left the strange place and in the other part of the dream, the truck driver turned over the rock again. There was a bunch of stuff about a painting, a UFO, song lyrics, jazz, time travel, a slug monster, war, death and memory too, but those parts are slipping away, even now.

Suddenly I felt more exhausted than I ever had in my entire life. Princess Sparkles had fallen asleep. The real response is something words can't express. If you can't get it across in words then it's better not to try. View all 27 comments. And a classic Murakami from beginning to end. This was my third book by Mr. Then came Norwegian Woods which I loved and have recommended to many friends. But Kafka on the Shore held a special place in the hearts of my friends who have read Murakami.

This seems to be their favourite. So I went into this with high expectations, and Mr. Murakami did not disappoint. Story starts with th Surreal. Story starts with the divulgence of a high profile investigation that happened in second WW.

Fast forward five decades and we are introduced to Kafka Tamura, a 15 year old, who runs away from his family to find the truth about himself. Few chapters after we met our second main character Nakata, a simpleton who talks to cats. After his retirement, Nakata survives by finding lost cats for people because of his special abilities. Even though they are miles apart from each other, and yet their story so intricately woven that it is hard to comprehend where one starts and the other ends.

For me, this was the weirdest magical realm that I have ever read. Fishes falling from the sky, talking to cats is there a word for being able to talk to cats? Murakami put a spell on me and I kept turning pages. The desire to know more about Kafka and Nakata and how their story entwines was too much. Just like 1Q84 and Norwegian Woods, Murakami tells us a lot about music and books through his characters. Whenever I read him I end up searching authors and musicians. I love how he uses these two in his stories.

So much happened in this book yet I will remember this book for its serenity and dreamlike story. A challenging but also an amazing read. View all 13 comments.

The book's title is also the name of a painting and of a song mentioned in the novel, and it describes the one photo Kafka's father has kept in his drawer.

But what Kafka neglects to tell us is that his story is a myth of epic, ancient Greek proportions. Murakami has concocted a contemporary blend of Oedipus and Orpheus, East and West, Freud and Jung, Hegel and Marx, Tales of Genji and Arabian Nights, Shinto and Buddhism, abstraction and action, alternating narratives and parallel worlds, seriousness and play, not to mention classical, jazz and pop music. Thus, it stands as quintessential Murakami. The book I read. Search for the Other Half Like Greek theatrical masks that represent tragedy and comedy, life consists of dualities: "Light and dark.

Hope and despair. Laughter and sadness. Trust and loneliness. Our shadow is faint or pale. Murakami urges: "You should start searching for the other half of your shadow. The irony is that the darkness is not so much outside, but inside. The woods, the forest are just a symbol of darkness, our own darkness. Yet, we need our imagination almost as much as our logic. Murakami quotes Yeats: "In dreams begin responsibility. And even more afraid of dreams.

Afraid of the responsibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep, and dreams are a part of sleep. When you're awake you can suppress imagination. But you can't suppress dreams.

What is happening? Does it really happen? If Kafka can only prevail, he will become an adult. He must act. Reason to Act Of course, there is a cast of surreal cats, crows and characters who contribute to the colour and dynamic of the novel.

One of my favourites is a Hegel-quoting whore a philosophy student who might both feature in and read the novels of Bill Vollmann!

They're always endeavouring to come to terms with the past and embrace the future: "The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future.

The earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place for ever. He challenges Nakata view spoiler [a stand-in for Kafka? Nakata now has a moral dilemma as to whether to kill a person to save the lives of others view spoiler [albeit cats hide spoiler ]. Eichmann was the builder rather than the architect behind the design of the Holocaust.

He was an officious conformist who lived and worked routinely without imagination. Hannah Arendt would describe him and his capacity for evil in terms of its banality.

Eichmann was too selfish and too conformist to empathise with the Jews he was trying to exterminate. Ultimately, he empathised with them enough to kill Johnnie Walker.

In Shinto, cats might be important in their own right. However, Murakami frequently uses cats in his fiction. Perhaps they represent other people in society, people we mightn't normally associate with or talk to, view spoiler [In which case cats might symbolise the underdog?

Murakami also criticised two women bureaucrats who visited the library for their officious presumption and lack of imagination, albeit in a good cause. For Murakami, the imagination is vital to completing the self, bonding society and oiling the mechanisms by which it works, but it is also an arena within which the psychodrama of everyday life plays out and resolves.

Only what Murakami tells us on page 3: "Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you.

Because this storm There's no sun When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. Beyond details of the real, We live our dreams. The past is a shattered plate That can't be repaired. The amount of nothingness Has just been increased. You're part of a brand new world. Nothing bad happened to you. Mozart - "Serenade in D major, K. Beethoven - "Piano Trio No. A short film that features the sandstorm quote. View all 59 comments.

Dec 16, Fabian rated it really liked it. The simplistic writing in "Kafka on the Shore" contrasts pretty sharply with the book's complicated themes. There are different levels of the mind, and after re The simplistic writing in "Kafka on the Shore" contrasts pretty sharply with the book's complicated themes. But "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is better. Fish and eels dropping from the sky, talking with felines, interacting with spirits: all these are exciting elements to bring forth in a contemporary story.

Murakami takes us to a place which seems new, possibly surprising even him. Perhaps he discovered what his novel was all about all too late to establish for his readership an elegant conclusion.

Also: what REAL fifteen year-old listens to jazz? I was not entirely convinced that the main character was all that naive, nor all that special. Bottom line: Very interesting all the way through, but not truly, ultimately, magnificent.

View all 10 comments. It's one of the most engaging and magical pieces of literature I've read. Reality is unclear. The book presses the boundaries of what exists around the characters versus what exists in their minds. Powerful forces guide the characters--some known, some unknown. Odd things happen within the context of everyday Japan. Mackarel rains from the sky. A metaphysical overseer appears under the guise of Colonel Sanders; a villian under the guise of Johnny Walker. The forest contains ghosts.

Everyday objects suddenly take on supernatural functions. Fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura runs away from home and finds himself in Takamastu, where he discovers a charming, privately owned public library to spend his days until things get complicated.

Turns out the events in his life--and possibly even his body--is intralinked with a man named Nakata. When Nakata was a child during World War II, a mysterious force in a field put him and several other schoolchildren in a coma, but Nakata's mind was the only one erased entirely.

As an adult, though mentally challenged, he has the ability to communicate with cats along with several other larger-than-life talents. Surreal forces draw Nakata, all which relate to Kafka Tamura's world. The desk assistant at the library, who immediately befriends Kafka, often references mythology--these references all end up being manifestations of the characters and the plot itself.

Because of this, in many ways the book mirrors the spirit of Franz Kafta's works how intentional these associations are by Murakami, I'm not sure. I was drawn to this book for the mood that it presented. It opened my imagination and set my spirit spinning with possibilities and ideas.

It's rare to find a story with this effect. The prose, as always by Murakami, grabs you from the get-go--it's charming, smooth, and intelligent without being pretentious.

An amazing read. View all 4 comments. Oct 03, Sid rated it it was amazing. This was my first ever Murakami read.

The name in the start attracted my attention and later when I asked a few friends about giving me an opinion on this book, I was told to just have a go at it the first chance that I get. I read the summary of this book on good reads and I wasn't able to make it out if I should go with it or not. Meanwhile, I had a chance to visit NYC. And libraries and bookshops are always my must go places whenever or wherever I get a chance. Well, I bought this book on my This was my first ever Murakami read.

Well, I bought this book on my visit to a bookshop. Even after coming back home, I had some hesitation towards reading it. But once I started it, I put it down only after completing it.

Such a page turner was it to me. If you ask me what this book was about, I would reply what this book was not about? If you ask me what did I learn from it, I won't be reluctant to say what topic did it not cover!

The author picked up a little of everything from the universe and put into this book and still didn't even touch a single thing. After being a long time reader, you start thinking that you can now kind of guess what a specific could be about or you expect at least that nothing could serve as a cause of your jaw drop.

This book proved me wrong! This author proved me wrong. He proved that other worlds and universes exist and within our own very little place in universe, there are things we haven't yet grabbed the meaning of. Very very well written. Must read for everyone and anyone who loves reading. Actually I read it some time ago.. Didn't like it much : Thanks for the go ahead. Didn't like it much Thanks for sharing. Shelves: magical-realism , postmodern-meta , china-japan-asia , friendship-and-found-family , bildungsroman.

Its most fundamental theme is the paradoxical nature of edges and boundaries literal, spiritual, ethical : that they can both separate and connect. The nature of connections and separation is tantalisingly opaque. And yet they run Source The title The title refers to the lyrics of a fictional song and a picture of it. Every line has a word that is a key part of the novel.

This is far more subtle than the rather heavy-handed way the Oedipus myth is repeatedly referenced. Words without letters Standing in the shadow of the door. The moon shines down on a sleeping lizard, Little fish rain down from the sky. Outside the window there are soldiers, Steeling themselves to die. Order now for expected delivery to Germany by Christmas. Description Kafka on the Shore follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters. Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy.

The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down. Their parallel odysseys are enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerising dramas.

Cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky; a ghostlike pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night; a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since WWII.

There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle. Murakami's new novel is at once a classic tale of quest, but it is also a bold exploration of mythic and contemporary taboos, of patricide, of mother-love, of sister-love.

Above all it is an entertainment of a very high order. Other books in this series. The Night Circus Erin Morgenstern. Add to basket. Kafka on the Shore Haruki Murakami. The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende. Frankenstein Mary Shelley.

Review Text "Kafka on the Shore" follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year.

His books became bestsellers, were translated into many languages, including English, and the door was thrown wide open to Murakami's unique and addictive fictional universe. Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a day, after which he runs ten kilometres he began long-distance running in and has participated in numerous marathons and races , works on translations, and then reads, listens to records and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of imaginative inquiry.

In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84 and Men Without Women, his distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring Murakami's place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers. Rating details.