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The 2007 Award

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami


 

 

Nominated by:

  • Bibliothèque Municipale de Lille, Lille, France
  • Osaka City Central Library, Osaka, Japan
  • New Hampshire State Library, Concord, USA
  • Houston Public Library, Houston, USA
  • Minneapolis Public Library, Minneapolis, USA
  • Boston Public Library, Boston, USA
  • Bibliothèques Municipales Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Consorci de Biblioteques de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
  • Belfast Education & Library Board, Belfast, Northern Ireland
  • Stadtbüchereien Düsseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany
  • Leipzig Stadtbibliothek, Leipzig, Germany
  • Biblioteca Demonstrativa de Brasília BDB, Brasilia, Brazil

 

Publisher of Nominated Edition
Vintage ISBN 0099458322
Alfred A. Knopf ISBN 1400043622
Harvill Press ISBN 1843431106

 

the complete A-Z listing of nominated authors
ABOUT THE BOOK
Kafka on the Shore follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters. Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy. The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down. Their parallel odysseys are enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerising dramas. Cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky; a ghostlike pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night; a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since WWII. There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle. Murakami's new novel is at once a classic tale of quest, but it is also a bold exploration of mythic and contemporary taboos, of patricide, of mother-love, of sister-love. Above all it is an entertainment of a very high order.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949. His works include A Wild Sheep Chase; The Elephant Vanishes; Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; Norwegian Wood; Dance Dance Dance; South of the Border, West of the Sun; The Wind-up Bird Chronicle; Sputnik Sweetheart; Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche; after the quake and Birthday Stories.


 

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