This week, Hannah sends Stephanie into the dream-like surrealism of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. Will it be sweet dreams for Stephanie, or will she just want to wake up?
Kafka Tamura is a fifteen-year-old boy running from both his past and his future with nowhere to hide. Nakata is a sixty-year-old man who can’t read or write, but he can find your lost house cat by conversing with neighborhood felines. Their stories converge in surprising, unconventional ways that lead to…well, somewhere. As Stephanie and Hannah try to make sense of this novel, they discuss endings, plot holes, the power of metaphors, and both the trials and merits of reading a book in translation from a different cultural viewpoint.
Resources:
Where My Characters Come From
Haruki Murakami, The Art of Fiction No. 182
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2/the-art-of-fiction-no-182-haruki-murakami
Kafka on the Shore’s Reality Cul-de-Sacs
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/books/review/kafka-on-the-shore-realitys-culdesacs.html
Subconscious Tunnels
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/01/24/subconscious-tunnels
Questions for Murakami about Kafka on the Shore
https://www.harukimurakami.com/q_and_a/questions-for-haruki-murakami-about-kafka-on-the-shore
Kill Me or the Cat Gets It
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/08/fiction.harukimurakami
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