Kafka on the Shore: A complete Book Summary

Kafka on the Shore is a book written by national bestseller writer/Author Haruki Murakami. Amongst his many this book particularly stands out for its surreal narrative that has the capacity to entice the readers despite the fact, that it neither is a thriller nor a mystery novel.

• Title: Kafka on the Shore
• Author: Haruki Murakami
• Total no of pages: 614
• Genre: Historical/ Contemporary fiction
• Language: English (Originally Japanese)

Kafka on the Shore: A complete Book Summary

#One-line summary: Illusional, dreamy, yet beautifully crafted drama that lasts into the imagination. 

#Paragraph summary: It is a progressive drama that intertwines the lives of two major characters, Kafka Tamura and Nakata, who surprisingly never meet each other in the story. The story unveils as Nakata runs from a vicious murder, travels across the cities, and quests for something called an "entrance stone". On the parallel track, at some point in time, Kafka Tamura experiences the illusionary touch of a parallel universe, the entrance to which was opened by Nakata, who metaphysically didn't know why and how he did it. All through the story reality and illusion play hide-and-seek as time, love, fate, and chance test both characters. 

#Complete summary 

Kafka Tamura, a 15 years teenager living in Tokyo plans an escape from his luxurious yet lonely home. Under his father's dark prophecy, he strives to find the meaning of his life, so he elopes with his ego (narrated as a boy named Crow in the story), which constantly reviews him. As he struggles being a vagrant, in a few days he stumbles upon a small private library in the provincial town of Takamatsu, where he meets with a cisgender woman Oshima, the library assistant.  

One night he wakes up in a shrine coated in blood, fully blank about what had happened. Horror-stricken, he ventures a visit to his previous acquaintance, Shakura, an adult independent girl. He lays out all to her and leaves the next day. In the following days, he settles as a full-time library assistant under the kind eyes of Oshima and eventually knows about the gruesome death of his father, for which he doubts himself to be the killer but can't confirm.

Oshima introduces Kafka to the head librarian, Miss Saeki, an elegant woman in her mid-fifty, who as time unfurls presents herself as an illusional spirit of fifteen year teenage girl to Kafka and makes love with him. Here, Kafka sways between reality and illusion, and his belief in his father's prophecy glorifies. One day, he confesses her love for Miss Saeki, to which she falls because she sees Kafka as her first lover who had died at a young age.

Parallel to this ran a second timeline; again originating from Tokyo. Nakata, in his sixties, is a hobo and has the ability to converse with cats, an unsung skill for what he is being paid sometimes. He suffers from a childhood tragedy that has dumbed him and is not able to read or write.

One day, chasing a lost cat he confronts a diabolical figure, Johnny Walker, who collects the heads of cats and stores them in a freezer. He wants to make a big flute with all these cats' souls. Something happens and Nakata Kills Johnny Walker; his way of killing is similar to how Kafka's father was murdered.

Nakata confesses the murder to the police, but the police outrightly reject his admission. He too, leaves Tokyo, and in the weirdest circumstances makes it to rain the fishes, and sometimes leeches from the sky as he meets Hoshino, a truck driver, who drives him from one city to another. His ability to rain these creatures makes him famous and the talk spreads into the ears of Kafka. 

Both search for something called "Entrance stone", an object Nakata had spat out to him just like that, which basically is the door to the parallel universe. Hoshino finds it, and in an inn, they open this "Entrance stone", which now as per Nakata needs to close, and for that they approach the same library where Kafka was!

Eventually, police hunt Nakata and put a radar over Kafka under suspicion of the murder which took place in Tokyo. Sniffing the situation, Oshima helps Kafka disappear into a jungle where his cabin is already. After staying at the cabin for days, Kafka chases deeper into the jungle where he finds the entrance to a town, a kind of parallel universe. He indulges himself in the weirdness of the place and, some epiphany suddenly pushes him out of the town. Here, Nakata along with Hoshino meets Miss Saeki at the library after Kafka was gone. 

Surreally, Miss Saeki recognizes Nakata and asks about the entrance stone. Nakata lays it all out, and in return receives Miss Saeki's life record written in a file. She requests him not to read it but to burn it all the way, and Nakata does the same. On the same day, death calls Miss Saeki and Nakata, and Hoshino closes the entrance stone after midnight.

But before closing the entrance, Kafka makes it out of the illusional town and gets back to the library, where he hears the awful news of the death of her love. 

He bids adieu to Oshima, leaves Takamatsu, and heads back to Tokyo with his ego named as the crow.

#Final impression

The plot narrated here might look simple but the author has presented the tale with so much excellence that you might find hooked up with the story. Despite many inexplicable occurrences and events, which even don't get straight in the end, you will find reading it worthwhile.

A few characters like Johnny Walker, KFC king Colonel Saunders, a Philosophical prostitute, ageless soldiers at the entrance gate, the slimy-snacky creature in the end, and even the entrance stone itself are hard to understand but worth enjoying. 

Read it if you love drama, tales of fantasy worlds, and deeper meaningful portrayals of characters.

#Other works of art from Haruki Murakami recommended by Phraseitup

#Norwegian Wood

#Sputnik sweetheart

#After dark

#Men without women