Kafka on the Shore
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Narrated by:
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Sean Barrett
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Oliver Le Sueur
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By:
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Haruki Murakami
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
Kafka Tamura runs away from home at 15, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy.
The ageing Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down.
As their parallel odysseys unravel, cats converse with people, fish tumble from the sky, a ghost-like pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night, a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since World War II. There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle - one of many which combine to create an elegant and dreamlike masterpiece.
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Critic reviews
"Wonderful.... Magical and outlandish." (Daily Mail)
"Cool, fluent and addictive." (Daily Telegraph)
"Hypnotic, spellbinding." (The Times)
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Overall
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Overall
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Performance
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The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.
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-
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life. Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world—a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves.
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The narrator says “liberry” instead of “library”
- By Justin Engelbart on 11-20-24
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What listeners say about Kafka on the Shore
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Jeanne Cooper
- 07-13-21
Best Narration
The voices and acting is so good! It captures the atmosphere and suspect the narrators made the book even more interesting. This is my first audio book, when I first click on sample, I was hooked by the memorising voice of Kafka, and used my credit immediately. I think there were parts of the books that would be a little slow without the narrators, and I feel the narrators brought the characters to life (especially for the characters Nakata and Hoshino). I don't think I would be able to finish this book reading it on my own (I have very short attention span, not easy for me to stay engaged for books that are longer than around 350 pages). So thank you Audible, and the entire cast of voices! I can 'read' long books now with your help and So glad I get to experience a literary work like Kafka on the Shore!
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Hrafn Jónsson
- 07-23-23
Best of the best of the best of the….
No one tells stories like Murakami does it. He’s simply in a league of his own. Kafka on the Shore is no exception.
Big applause for the narrators. Quite possibly the best read book I’ve listened to.
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