pbraue13 's review for:

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

3.5

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions.”
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore 

Kafka on the Shore was my first Haruki Murakami novel, and what an introduction it was—a fun, surreal dream of a book that left me both bewildered and enchanted in the best possible way. From the first page, I felt like I had stepped into a strange, shifting world where the rules of reality were bent, but the emotions rang true. 

Murakami blends the mystical with the mundane so effortlessly that talking cats, raining fish, and ghost-like figures somehow feel natural, even necessary. The story follows two main characters: Kafka Tamura, a 15-year-old runaway searching for answers, and Nakata, an elderly man with a childlike mind and the ability to speak to cats. Their parallel journeys feel like two sides of the same dream—mysteriously connected, looping around each other in unexpected and beautiful ways. 

What makes this novel so magical is how it floats between logic and the subconscious. Reading it felt like falling into a lucid dream: the scenes are vivid and strange, the characters cryptic but magnetic, and the atmosphere thick with meaning you can’t quite explain—but you feel it. It’s playful, eerie, philosophical, and deeply human all at once. 

Murakami doesn’t hand you a tidy resolution, and that’s part of the charm. Kafka on the Shore invites you to wander, wonder, and interpret freely. For a debut experience with his work, I couldn’t have asked for a better guide into the surreal.