Kafka on the Shore

Haruki Murakami

Aug 2013 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Sean Barrett and Oliver Le Sueur

About this audiobook

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and one of the world’s greatest storytellers comes “an insistently metaphysical mind-bender” (The New Yorker) about a teenager on the run and a deceptively simple old man.

Now with a new introduction by the author.

Here we meet fifteen-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura and the elderly Nakata, who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey.

“As powerful as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.... Reading Murakami ... is a striking experience in consciousness expansion.”—Chicago Tribune

Ratings and reviews

I loved this book! The imagery that Murakami creates is breath taking. His depth of world is immense, and the characters are well developed throughout the story. This book encourages on self reflection on the part of the reader. If you're into riddles, you'll enjoy the book's deep layering of themes and symbols. Warning: This book can be very sexually graphic at times, as well as violent. You might not enjoy a the book if you don't like it when things are wrapped up neatly at the end, or if you like to have all your questions answered. That said, I've heard it takes more than one read to get the full picture, so keep that in mind. The readers on this book were absolutely excellent, and have beautiful and soothing voices.

About the author

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than forty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J. M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera, and V. S. Naipaul.