The writing is deceptively simple - I loved it that Murakami didn't bother with flowery sentences, rather relying on simple straightforward language to drive home his point. There were times, I emerged from the book as if in a trance.

And despite my usual reluctance to read anything that's not grounded in reality, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Interestingly, I never read much about Murakami's works before - these are apparently standard elements in his books. Had I known beforehand what this book had - magical realism, people who can talk to cats, people who can cross the invisible barrier between life and death - I may never have read this book. It isn't even that huge, but there's so much intrigue in here, that occasionally I spent a few days digesting what I had just read. Kafka on the Shore took me close to a month to finish. And so, across 430-odd pages, the two characters run away and towards forces beyond their control, increasingly intertwining their lives, but never crossing paths once. He has no idea what to do once he gets there or why he needs to go there, but decides to worry about that later. One day, he decides to travel down to a place where there's a big bridge. In alternate chapters, we follow an elderly Tokyo man named Satoru Nakata, who suffered a strange episode when he was nine, causing him to lose all memory and his ability to read or write, but giving him the ability to talk to cats. To escape the curse, he leaves Tokyo and travels down to Takamatsu, where he whiles away his time at a private library and the local gym. His father had prophesied that Kafka would fulfill the Oedipal curse - that he would murder his father, and sleep with his mother and sister. His mother had run away with his sister when he was four, so he had no memory of how they looked. Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore primarily follows fifteen-year old solitary Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home because he can no longer stand the presence of his malevolent father. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand Will be even worse the next time you open your eyes.

Nothing's going toĭisappear just because you can't see what's going on. 'Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything.