My first novel by Haruki Murakami – I thought I will never manage to finish this murder mystery, love affair, storytelling and philosophical mixture. I loved it and now I can relate to everyone else saying how “beautifully weird” are Murakami’s books.

I can’t clearly explain in simple words what exactly happens but Kafka on the Shore is a story about a fifteen-year-old book lover who calls himself Kafka and runs away from home to look for his lost mother and sister and to get away from his horrible father whose crimes against him are never fully explained.

Fate draws him to a town where he meets two women who may well be his mother and sister, which doesn’t prevent him from having sex with them. His story is intersected with that of Nakata, a sixty-year-old man who can talk to cats. You quickly realize that Kafka’s and Nakata’s lives are interconnected, but exactly how this is doesn’t become clear until the end and maybe not even then. 

It would make a hell of a Japanese movie.

“That’s why I like to listen to Schubert while I’m driving.

As I said, it’s because all the performances are imperfect.[…]

If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I’m driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. [Oshima, p. 119]