 Hello, I am Yumti Yong Longkomer from BA First Semester History Department and I will be giving a book review on Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer and he was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His other works include After the Quake, Dance Dance Dance, The Elephant Vanishes, Norwegian Wood and the Wind Up Bird Chronicle. So Kafka on the Shore has a dual perspective. It is powered by two prominent characters who are Kafka Tamura, who is a 15 year old boy who runs away from home because to escape a prophecy which is more like a curse. Then you have Nakata who is an aging simpleton and due to an incident he is able to talk to cats. Now although these two different characters seem to have a different journey, their parts eventually intertwine at the end of the novel. So Kafka on the Shore is my first Haruki Murakami book and personally I really enjoyed reading it and yeah it was really confusing at first so I had to read it a couple of times and to be honest I'm still confused and it has left me speculating about a lot of things. There are some parts that I didn't like reading and I won't be spilling any spoilers so let's just say that there are some really detailed bloody and questionable scenes. So my advice would be just read the novel with a very open mindset because it's very beautifully and well written. So the novel has themes of duality, fate and it is also a coming of age for Kafka the 15 year old boy and there is magical realism in the split realities like there are a lot of there is dream world and a lot of spirits and the ability to talk to cats and many more that you will find as you read the as you read the novel the author also makes a lot of references to writers classical music and even Greek mythology. So the magic about this novel is in the unexplained unexplained because the novel is actually very confusing and it has a lot of random events and some really bizarre characters as well but all these eventually make sense at the end and you know it leaves the reader a lot to speculate and a lot to work on and I think that's what's really interesting about this book and so yeah I would rate it a five out of five and I would definitely recommend you to read it. I really enjoyed reading it and if you have read the book I would really be happy to know your thoughts on the novel. That's all from me. Happy reading.