Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between both plots, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters.
The odd-numbered 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.[1] 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-numbered 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 (Murakami's earlier work The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle also involves searching for a lost cat). Having finally located and returned one particular cat to its owners, Nakata finds that the circumstances of the case have put him on a path which, unfolding one step at a time before him, takes the illiterate man far away from his familiar and comforting home territory. He takes a gigantic leap of faith in going on the road for the first time in his life, unable even to read a map and without knowing where he will eventually end up. 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. What appear to be random and irrelevant occurrences and situations are actually crucial to the final outcome for all.[Wikipedia]
KAFKA ON THE SHORE- Haruki Marukami
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