Its very strangeness is required by the story’s increasingly dreamlike logic to establish Nakata’s place in the world and his role in the plot. Murakami cannily never explains the true nature of the phenomenon, because that isn't important. Nakata is a man in his sixties, an illiterate simpleton whose mind was quite literally bulk-erased by a strange childhood incident during World War II involving what can only be called a UFO sighting. Kafka ends up at a private library in Takamatsu, where he befriends the assistant, the strangely androgynous Oshima, and whiles away his days reading - until circumstances change. He simply wants a change, to be part of a brand new world. They occupy his thoughts, but aren’t really the focus. In part, Kafka is searching for them, but not openly. Kafka’s mother abandoned the family when he was only four, taking an older, adopted sister. He has no idea where he’s going or what he’ll do when he gets there. Kafka Tamura runs away from his Tokyo home on his fifteenth birthday. The plot is anchored by two remarkable characters. Like the best of magical realism, fantasy elements are spliced into everyday settings as if they fully belonged there. It’s a story about loss, and about being lost, but it’s never maudlin even in its most profound moments, and is often quite funny. Kafka in the Shore is 460 pages of dreamlike bliss. He weaves slipstream fiction in a manner that cuts to the heart of his characters’ deepest emotional conflicts, all the while avoiding pretention or bathos. Murakami is one of the world’s truly extraordinary storytellers. Happily for me, and now for you, that lack has been addressed. in 2005, not won the World Fantasy Award in 2006 - an award I consider among the more reputable in the field, in that it’s willing to risk going far afield for its candidates, and embraces world literature in a way the Hugos and Nebulas usually don’t - then I’d never have made the discovery of Haruki Murakami, and my life would be thus bereft. Had Kafka on the Shore, released in the U.S. (Or, more to the point, the genre’s boundaries as the publishing industry defines them.) The books that publishers send you pile up so fast that reading anything else seems like an irresponsible luxury.

One of the hazards of being a full-time fantasy and SF critic is that your reading schedule often doesn’t allow for work outside the genre. Share book reviews and ratings with Thomas, and even join a book club on Goodreads.

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