Study Guide: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (SuperSummary)


Book Description

SuperSummary, a modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, offers high-quality study guides for challenging works of literature. This 72-page guide for "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami includes detailed chapter summaries and analysis covering 49 chapters, as well as several more in-depth sections of expert-written literary analysis. Featured content includes commentary on major characters, 25 important quotes, essay topics, and key themes like Fate versus Self-Determination and Meaning of Memory.




Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (Book Analysis)


Book Description

Unlock the more straightforward side of Kafka on the Shore with this concise and insightful summary and analysis! This engaging summary presents an analysis of Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, which tells the story of 15-year-old Kafka as he runs away from home to escape from his famous sculptor father and search for his mother and sister. In parallel, Nakata, who was involved in a mysterious accident as a child that left him unable to read and write, but with the newfound ability to talk to cats, embarks on a similar voyage across the country. Unbeknownst to them, the two men are linked by a bloody murder, and they both become embroiled in a series of bizarre events that change the way they see the world. The novel showcases Murakami’s signature blend of surrealist, dreamlike storytelling and close attention to real-world detail, and it remains among his best-known works. Find out everything you need to know about Kafka on the Shore in a fraction of the time! This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you: • A complete plot summary • Character studies • Key themes and symbols • Questions for further reflection Why choose BrightSummaries.com? Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you on your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!




A Study Guide for Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore"


Book Description

A Study Guide for Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Literary Newsmakers for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Literary Newsmakers for Students for all of your research needs.




Kafka on the Shore


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the New York Times bestselling author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and one of the world’s greatest storytellers comes "an insistently metaphysical mind-bender” (The New Yorker) about a teenager on the run and an aging simpleton. Now with a new introduction by the author. Here we meet 15-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura and the elderly Nakata, who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey. “As powerful as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.... Reading Murakami ... is a striking experience in consciousness expansion.” —The Chicago Tribune




Study Guide


Book Description

SuperSummary, a modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, offers high-quality study guides for challenging works of literature. This 30-page guide for the short story "A Report to an Academy" by Franz Kafka includes detailed a summary and analysis, as well as several more in-depth sections of expert-written literary analysis. Featured content includes commentary on major characters, 15 important quotes, essay topics, and key themes like Delusion Versus Desire and Civilization Versus Freedom.




The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle


Book Description

A "dreamlike and compelling” tour de force (Chicago Tribune)—an astonishingly imaginative detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets from Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria during World War II. In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels.




Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman


Book Description

From the surreal to the mundane, twenty-four stories that “show Murukami at his dynamic, organic best” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). "A warning to new readers of Haruki Murakami: You will become addicted.... His newest collection is as enigmatic and sublime as ever." —San Francisco Chronicle Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit Murakami’s ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and entertaining.




Killing Commendatore


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art—from one of our greatest writers. • “Exhilarating ... magical.” —The Washington Post When a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he secludes himself in the mountain home of a world famous artist. One day, the young painter hears a noise from the attic, and upon investigation, he discovers a previously unseen painting. By unearthing this hidden work of art, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances; and to close it, he must undertake a perilous journey into a netherworld that only Haruki Murakami could conjure.




Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (Book Analysis)


Book Description

Unlock the more straightforward side of Norwegian Wood with this concise and insightful summary and analysis! This engaging summary presents an analysis of Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, a poignant exploration of memory, mental illness and first loves. It is told from the perspective of Toru Watanabe, who hears the Beatles song ‘Norwegian Wood’ on a flight and is immediately reminded of his romance with a young woman named Naoko during his time at university. Although Toru cared for her deeply, their relationship was unconventional in many ways and eventually ended in tragedy, tinging his joy-filled memories with sorrow. Norwegian Wood is arguably the best-known novel by Haruki Murakami, one of the most popular Japanese-language authors of the 21st century. Find out everything you need to know about Norwegian Wood in a fraction of the time! This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you: • A complete plot summary • Character studies • Key themes and symbols • Questions for further reflection Why choose BrightSummaries.com? Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you on your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!




After Dark


Book Description

A short, sleek novel of encounters set in the witching hours of Tokyo between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami’s masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. At its center are two sisters: Yuri, a fashion model sleeping her way into oblivion; and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny’s into lives radically alien to her own: those of a jazz trombonist who claims they’ve met before; a burly female “love hotel” manager and her maidstaff; and a Chinese prostitute savagely brutalized by a businessman. These “night people” are haunted by secrets and needs that draw them together more powerfully than the differing circumstances that might keep them apart, and it soon becomes clear that Yuri’s slumber—mysteriously tied to the businessman plagued by the mark of his crime—will either restore or annihilate her. After Dark moves from mesmerizing drama to metaphysical speculation, interweaving time and space as well as memory and perspective into a seamless exploration of human agency—the interplay between self-expression and understanding, between the power of observation and the scope of compassion and love. Murakami’s trademark humor, psychological insight and grasp of spirit and morality are here distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery.