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Umibe no Kafuka | translator = Philip Gabriel | image = Image:Kafkaontheshore.jpg | caption = First edition (Japanese) | author = Haruki Murakami | cover_artist = | country = Japan | language = Japanese | series = | genre = | published = | media_type = Print (Hardcover) | pages = 656 | isbn = 1-84343-110-6 | oclc = 56805021 }} is a 2002 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. John Updike described it as a "real page-turner, as well as an insistently metaphysical mind-bender". Since its 2005 English-language release (2006 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize-winning translation by Philip Gabriel), the novel has received mostly positive reviews and critical acclaim, including a spot on ''The New York Times'' 10 Best Books of 2005 and the World Fantasy Award. == Plot summary== Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between both plots, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters. The odd chapters tell the 15-year-old Kafka's story as he runs away from his father's house to escape an Oedipal curse and to embark upon a quest to find his mother and sister. After a series of adventures, he finds shelter in a quiet, private library in Takamatsu, run by the distant and aloof Miss Saeki and the intelligent and more welcoming Oshima. There he spends his days reading the unabridged Richard Francis Burton translation of ''One Thousand and One Nights'' and the collected works of Natsume Sōseki until the police begin inquiring after him in connection with a brutal murder. The even chapters tell Nakata's story. Due to his uncanny abilities, he has found part-time work in his old age as a finder of lost cats (notably, Murakami's earlier work ''The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'' also involves searching for a lost cat). The case of one particular lost cat puts him on a path that ultimately takes him far away from his home, ending up on the road for the first time in his life. He befriends a truck driver named Hoshino, who takes him on as a passenger in his truck and soon becomes very attached to the old man. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kafka on the Shore」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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