"Kafka on the Shore" is the ninth novel by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, published in 2002.
Included in The New York Times Top 10 Novels of 2005 and awarded the World Fantasy Award.
"Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart." ― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
In the center of the work are two fates, the teenager Kafka Tamura, who ran away from home from the gloomy prophecy of his father, and the old man Nakata. The amazing fates of the heroes, the inhabitants of Japan in the second half of the 20th century, are influenced by prophecies, messengers from the other world and ... cats.
A young man named Tamura, nicknamed the Raven, runs away from home on the day of his fifteenth birthday because of a bad relationship with his father. Even in childhood, he expresses a prophecy, echoing the Greek myth of Oedipus, that his son will live with his mother and sister (they left the family when the boy was 4 years old) and will kill his father. After leaving Tokyo, the Nakano district, he finds himself in the city of Takamatsu in the south of the Japanese islands, and takes a new name for himself - Kafka. In parallel, the plot of Nakata develops - a man who, in the late 1940s, as a boy, witnessed the landing of an alien aircraft, after which he received a number of paranormal abilities, but paid for this with chronic mental retardation. At the time described, he also lives in Nakano, receiving a small disability pension. In addition to cats, with which he can communicate with the same ease as ordinary people - among themselves, he has no friends or relatives. Thanks to his unique gift, Nakata can find a cat that has run away from home on the street, and completing such tasks is a significant part of his earnings.
In Takamatsu, Kafka Tamura meets people who take part in his fate - the boy Oshima, the director of the private library Saeki-san and the girl Sakura. He falls in love with Saeki-san, although he considers her to be his mother, while Sakura is his sister.
Nakata accidentally kills Tamura's father, the Cat Hunter, who calls himself "Johnny Walker," while Kafka finds himself unconscious in a park covered in blood.
Nakata begins the long journey from Tokyo to Takamatsu, and Kafka understands the amazing twists and turns of Saeki-san's fate. Obeying the dictates of otherworldly forces, Nakata opens a passage to an unknown world, and through this passage Kafka enters a settlement outside of time, where he meets people who have left this world. Nevertheless, he chooses reality, the passage closes, and Nakata dies. Saeki-san also dies.
Kafka Tamura, not escaping the prophecy of his father, nevertheless finds his way in life and returns to Tokyo.
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