Kafka on the Shore

Limited first edition in English. 8vo. Pp. [vi], 505, [1]. Cream cloth, lettered in black to spine; decorated endpapers. Housed in a black cloth slipcase. Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, winner of the 2006 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for this effort. Originally published as Umibe no Kafuka in 2002, in a two-volume set by Shinchōsha Publishing Co. Ltd, Tokyo.

1/1000 copies signed in English by the author on a tipped-in bookplate.

Author's tenth novel. Winner of the 2006 Franz Kafka Prize as well as a 2006 World Fantasy Award. Named as one of the Best Five Fiction Books of the Year in 2005 by the New York Times. Incorporating musical motifs, metaphysics, and the subconscious, an exploration of mythic and contemporary taboos in which a teenage boy's flight from his Oedipal curse crosses paths with an ageing simpleton bearing a wartime affliction.

According to Murakami, the secret to understanding this complex novel lies in reading it several times: "Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape." "[A] real page-turner, as well as an insistently metaphysical mind-bender." –John Updike, The New Yorker