Word: kafka
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...Murakami, 53, has won neither (he has garnered lesser awards, including the Gunzo for debut novels.) "Murakami's work is in-between," explains Mitsuyoshi Numano, a literature professor at the University of Tokyo. "If a writer pursues high-quality literature, the book doesn't sell." Murakami's latest novel, Kafka on the Shore, has thus cast him into further disfavor with Japan's guardians of aesthetic integrity. Published in September, it vaulted to the top of Japanese best-seller lists on the day of its release and sold 460,000 copies in just two months...
...always prolific, but in the past seven years Murakami has kicked into overdrive. He's translated short stories, nonfiction and children's books, written travelogues, essays, short stories, a short novel and two books of nonfiction. With Kafka on the Shore, Murakami has added his first full-length novel in seven years. Loosely based on Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, it's the story of Kafka Tamura, a 15-year-old boy who flees Tokyo to find the meaning of life. He comes from the kind of dysfunctional family Murakami often portrays. Kafka's mother and elder sister leave when...
...Reviews have been mixed. Some critics found Kafka antifeminist and its sex scenes gratuitous. "Precisely because the writing is so good, its ... content worries me," the critic Yuzo Tsubouchi wrote in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. However, Tetsuo Matsuda, who reviewed it for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's best-selling broadsheet, praised the book as a profound philosophical rumination on the turbulent times afflicting Japan. "In any heavy storm, there are always writers who hoist a torchlight in front of people," Matsuda raved. "Murakami has been, and will be, taking that role. Whatever happens in the world, I will watch...
...California market] looked like it had been designed by Franz Kafka and created by Rube Goldberg,” Ruggie quipped...
...toes the line between film and animation. One disloyal kiss throws the lives of jaded urban couples into chaos, sending them headlong into unlikely liaisons with a seductive cellist, a cinephile stewardess and a dominatrix bowling alley attendant (Marisa Tomei). While rookie director Fisher Stevens’ conception of Kafka seems to center on angsty witticisms, indie rock and lots of skinny people wearing black, the film’s imaginative play promises plenty of eye candy...