HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD

Author: Haruki Murakami 

Can you imagine a book where the characters have no names? How about imagining a human calculating machine with junction boxes in his brain?

The hero/narrator/calculating technician (Calcutec) works for the ‘system’, a firm which helps in protecting valuable data for clients. He gets a strange assignment from an old scientist to help him do some data manipulation. The scientist fears that the data could be stolen by a rival firm called the ‘semiotec’, and it would lead to catastrophe. The scientist also gifts him a unique skull as a parting gift.

The Calcutec meets a beautiful librarian and with her help researches about the skull. He learns that the skull belongs to a mythical creature, and begins to doubt his sanity. His life tumbles upside down, when a fat guy and a lean man get inside his apartment and smash his whole house. They warn that the scientist has skewed the Calcutec’s mind with the data he gave, and the world is going to end because of this. The lean guy asks the Calcutec to run away from the place and find the truth. They demolish all his belongings and finally slash his stomach to make the drama look convincing.

The hero receives a call from the fat granddaughter of the scientist, who pleads him to rescue her grandfather, as she fears he has been kidnapped by either the system or the semiotic. The Calcutec finally understands what has been done to him and the mystery unfolds into a painful nightmare.

In another narrative stream, there is a town surrounded by a wall, monitored by a Gatekeeper. The town is completely perfect, and the people do their respective tasks. They do not have shadows, and they cannot leave the town. A person enters the town, without his memories, and his shadow, and tries to make sense of all of it. He is given the task of reading dreams from old animal skulls placed in a library. The Dream reader is assisted with a librarian, who is familiar to him, but still doesn’t know anything about her.

The Dream reader’s shadow contacts him, and together they plan to escape. Did they escape? Did the Calcutec finally find the key to the puzzle? The story makes you anticipate till the end as the two worlds converge. The Calcutec is a laid back character, averse to making decisions, and lets his life flow from one point to another. His reactions on being forced to something unpleasant are described in a way unique to Murakami. Also some allegories from this book are borrowed for his later work “Kafka on the shore”.

The author traverses between two realities and we can no longer believe which is the real one and which one imaginary. Murakami does it every time!

KAFKA ON THE SHORE

Author: HARUKI MURAKAMI

Japanese authors are slow, a long standing opinion. But Murakami’s Kafka on the shore speaks a unique style. A mixture of surrealistic events and thought provoking metaphors,  Kafka on the shore impresses from page one.

Kafka, the fifteen year old boy from Tokyo is a runaway; he has long decided to go to Takamatsu. He leaves behind his dad, a sadistic cat killer and his only known relative, fearing that he would become like him. His father had supposedly cursed him; the Oedipal curse.

   At the same time, Nakata, a 60 year old illiterate man who speaks better with cats than men gets entangled in Kafka’s father’s death. Nakata confesses the crime, but no one takes him seriously. For the first time in his life, Nakata leaves his town and travels westbound. He doesn’t know why he is travelling; only that he has to cross a big bridge.

   Kafka, with the help of Oshima, finds refugee in a private library in Takamatsu.  Sakura, a twenty year old girl helps him out of a difficult situation. Ms. Seiki, the head of the library is very kind towards Kafka. Slowly, Kafka theorises that Ms. Seiki to be his mother and Sakura to be his long lost sister. He is angry at them for abandoning him, but worried about the oedipal curse.

   Nakata introduces himself to others as, “Nakata is not bright, Nakata can’t read.” He lives on a subsidy for mentally challenged. Apart from earning occasional meals by finding lost cats. One such expedition changes his life forever. The intriguing reason behind the accident that turned him incapable of understanding words adds to the mystery and depth of the character.

  How did Nakata learn to speak with cats? Will Kafka’s father’s curse come true? Are Ms. Seiki and Sakura blood related? Are they his real mother and sister? Why would a mother leave a four year old with a sadistic father? Why does his the photo on the library wall remind him about his own childhood? What is the link between Nakata and Kafka?

  It is not a book where all the plot threads are finally closed, and yet there is some closure at the end of the novel. The book is fast paced, but leaves us with lot of unanswered questions. Murakami’ s ideas are so strong that he makes us believe that anything the reader imagines is possible.

From Murakami’s interview, “The secret to understanding the novel lies in reading it multiple 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. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel I set out to write”

  Music is an important component of the novel, the title comes from a pop song Kafka is given in the library by Oshima. It was sung by Ms. Seiki in her teenage, a sensational hit during that time. She never sung again.  The music of  Beethovan, and a background story about Beethovan’s life plays out in Nakata’s story.

So many riddles and a riveting read.