main line

The hero of the novel is a teenager who calls himself Tamura Kafka-the author never gives his real name. When Kafka was four years old, his mother suddenly disappeared and took away his sister, who was actually Tamura's adopted daughter, four years older than Kafka, but somehow abandoned her own son. He has never seen a picture of his mother, and he doesn't even know his name. As if fate were guiding him, he came to a private library by accident and lived here. Ms. Saeki, the curator, is a beautiful woman in her fifties with elegant temperament and mysterious twists and turns in her life. Kafka suspected that she was his mother, but Saeki was noncommittal. Kafka fell in love with Saeki and had a physical relationship with him.

Subsystem

There is also a sub-line in the novel. The protagonist of the second line is the old man Nakata. When he was in primary school during World War II, he experienced a mysterious coma. From then on, he lost his memory and completely forgot what he had learned. He could not even read and count, but he gained the mysterious ability to talk to cats. In the case of losing his mind, Nakata killed a madman who called himself JohnnyWalker and dressed up as an English gentleman painted on a famous whisky trademark. He hitchhiked all the way here. This novel is divided into 49 chapters. Odd chapters basically tell Kafka's story in a realistic way, and even chapters show Nakata's adventures in a magical way. These two techniques are used interactively to weave a modern fable with strong fictional color and absurd complexity. Saeki is the joint of these two stories, and the prediction of patricide seems inevitable in the end, because the madman Johnny Walker is actually Kafka's disguised biological father, and the real murderer is not Nakata …

Distinguish and appreciate

The novel adopts a double-line structure in which two clues travel alternately, respectively describing the two protagonists who find the value of self-existence and gain the meaning of life in unfortunate circumstances. One clue is Tamura Kafka's self-report. When he was a child, his mother left home. When I was a teenager, I was cursed by my father. "When I grow up, I will kill my father and defile my mother and sister." On 15' s birthday, he left home and went to Gaosong County in Shikoku. In the next ten days, he experienced strange experiences such as killing his father in his dream, fantasizing about the love between the library and "mother" (Ms. Saeki), and crossing the forest. With the help of KINOMOTO SAKURA, Oshima and Ms. Saeki, he gained the motivation to live again, and finally returned to real life with a tenacious attitude. Another clue narrates Satoshi Nakata's magical experience in the third person. At the end of World War II, teenager Nakata experienced a "collective lethargy", from which he lost his memory and became an illiterate and mentally retarded person. It is difficult to communicate with people, but he can talk to cats. The elderly Nakata, who lives alone with government subsidies, seems to shoulder an important mission. When he was helping people find cats, he was forced to kill Johnny Walker, the cat killer. Then he left Tokyo and, with the help of young driver Hoshino, went to Shikoku to find and open the "entrance stone". After completing his mission, he passed away safely, and Hoshino, who had been in a daze, began a new life. Two clues are intertwined: Johnny Walker, who was killed by the old man Nakata, is the father of Kafka Tamura, and the "entrance stone" he uncovered is the "outside population" of Tamura entering the "other world". The novel uses ancient Greek mythology and ancient Japanese legends to launch a stage through time and space in the real and illusory world, and to think and discuss the problems about human survival situation and destiny, such as war and human nature, man and nature, and the relationship between people in modern society.