Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami

The Vintage edition of Kafka on the Shore has sold nearly 389,000 copies since 2005Murakami's entire backlist will be rejacketed in a new iconic, witty and collectable series style to coincide with the publication of 1Q84 in VintageMurakami's profile has never been higher. His magnum opus, the trilogy 1Q84, was published by Harvill Secker in 2011 to rapturous reviews and his best-ever hardback sales: both volumes were Sunday Times bestsellers and combined hardback sales are nearly at 180,000 copiesMurakami is an international phenomenon: beloved in his native Japan, he is a bestseller the world over - his books are published in 45 territories, in 42 languages

'Critics have variously likened him to Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C. Clarke, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Pynchon - a roster so ill assorted as to suggest Murakami is in fact an original' New York Times

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers’ award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, which turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were translated into many languages, including English, and the door was thrown wide open to Murakami’s unique and addictive fictional universe.

Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of imaginative inquiry. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84 and Men Without Women, his distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring Murakami’s place as one of the world’s most acclaimed and well-loved writers.

Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy.

The aging 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.

*Murakami's new book Novelist as a Vocation is available now*

'Wonderful... Magical and outlandish' Daily Mail

'Hypnotic, spellbinding' The Times

'Cool, fluent and addictive' Daily Telegraph

Wonderful... Magical and outlandishA magnificently bewildering achievement... Brilliantly conceived, bold in its surreal scope, sexy and driven by a snappy plot... Exuberant storytellingCool, fluent and addictiveHypnotic, spellbindingAddictive... Exhilarating... A pleasure