Kafka on the Shore : Riveting, Confusing.

Author : Haruki Murakami

ISBN : 978-0-099-45832-6

This review may or may not contain spoilers. It may or may not be understandable to you. Just like the book.

Kafka “on the shore” is a two-layered story. One pursues a 15 year old kid Kafka Tamura who runs away from his home, from his sculptor-father who couldn’t care less about him, to provincial cities like Takamatsu in Shikoku.  The other pursues a a-little-slow-on-the-uptake Nakata who has the unique ability to converse with cats and make sardines and leeches rain from the sky. Yes, you read that right.

The “on the shore” part is the boundary between the human conscious and the unconscious mind. Following Hegel’s and Jung’s philosophical aspects of delving into the unconscious, this book traces Kafka’s journey,physical and metaphorical, deeper within himself and outside. This is what Murakami had to say about his book :

"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. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel I set out to write."  

It sounded a lot like Nolan’s view on his movie “Inception” or Sigur Ros’ explanation of their music.

The Pros: Murakami has a mass-market ficton writing style which will ensure that this book will be a breeze to go through. But, rife with imagery of blood, sex(oh, Oedipal Myth!) and startling inexplicable incidents, you will soon realise that any attempt for a pragmatic view of his writing will soon leave you exhausted and overwhelmed.  He and his character warns us readers from the offset that the exploration of self is a dangerous business. If you get lost within the labyrinth, you may never get out.

"The storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine."

The Cons: The “Americanisation” of the novel is rather distracting. Japanese characters have more knowledge of whiskey, jazz than native Americans and throw in a “Man Alive!” with aplomb. The translation is very disappointing as the lyricism of the Japanese language is lost on the translator. This book, being my first of Murakami, is an alluring read. No doubt respect is due. But it leaves a lot of loose ends.(Think ‘The Sense of an Ending’)  Giving away the punchline of this 500-page mammoth would be a tall order for me, frankly, because there isn’t one. 

Next up, 1984 by George Orwell.