Originally published in 2002 as 海辺のカフカ (Umibe no Kafuka)Winner of the 2006 World Fantasy AwardOne of The 10 Best Books of 2005 (New York Times)WithKafka on the Shore,Haruki Murakamigives us a novel every bit as ambitious & expansive asThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here & around the world for its uncommon ambition & achievement, & whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read & admired for decades to come.This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope & the same capacity to amaze, entertain, & bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy,Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother & sister; and an aging simpleton calledNakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction & now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom.Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices & mesmerizing events. Cats & people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, & rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim & perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka & Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely & the other given a fresh start on his own.Extravagant in its accomplishment,Kafka on the Shoredisplays one of the world's truly great storytellers at the height of his powers.—Hardcover