Kafka on the Shore

Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, and the reasons for that convergence become clear, 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. Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s great storytellers at the peak of his powers.

The Trial

Franz Kafka

Written in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka’s death, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.

Nausea

Jean-Paul Sartre

Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the world and people around him. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which "spread at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time, the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain." Roquentin's efforts to come to terms with his life, his philosophical and psychological struggles, give Sartre the opportunity to dramatize the tenets of his Existentialist creed.

My Bookshelf

(add a book)

sort by

City of Glass

Paul Auster
David Mazzuchelli

Akira

Katsuhiro Otomo

The Divine Comedy

Danté Alighieri

Last Exit to Brooklyn

Hubert Selby Jr.

Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad

Junky

William Burroughs

The New York Trilogy

Paul Auster

Phenomenology of Perception

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

The Stranger

Albert Camus

1Q84

Haruki Murakami

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

The Hobbit

J. R. R. Tolkien

Metamorphasis

Franz Kafka

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams

Outliers

Malcolm Gladwell

Totality and Infinity

Emmanuel Levinas

The Republic

Plato

Maus

Art Spiegelman

Tintin: The Shooting Star

Herge

Tintin: The Black Island

Herge

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams

Maus

Art Spiegelman

Tintin: The Shooting Star

Herge

Tintin: The Black Island

Herge