If You Loved... "Kafka On The Shore"
you may like...
If you liked Murakami’s novel particularly due to its musical motifs, you may enjoy Daughter From the Dark by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko. The authors, a married couple from Russia, invent a surreal, whimsical tale with subtle homages to the story of the Pied Piper, whose tone is very much in keeping with that of Murakami’s world.--Griffin
If you were drawn to Kafka on the Shore’s arc of a young man discovering himself through contact with a new, unknown dimension, you might try Hermann Hesse’s classic novel Steppenwolf. Hesse’s book, published first in 1927, follows a misanthropic young man named Harry Haller as he discovers a magic theatre and penetrates its secrets, hoping to find serenity and transcendence within. The book was a big hit with the counterculture movement of the 1960s, and indeed, it’s a total trip!--Griffin
If you enjoyed the dreamy, otherworldly feel of Kafka on the Shore, you might also like the novel Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi. The book, which came out in 2019, updates the story of Hansel and Gretel and expands it outward into totally unexpected directions, all within the framework of beautiful, contemporary prose.--Griffin
If you liked Kafka on the Shore for its evocation of modern Japanese life, you could also be interested in Yoko Ogawa’s The Housekeeper and the Professor. Ogawa, whose dystopian sci-fi novel The Memory Police debuted in English in 2019, wrote this earlier novel in 2003, and it tells the story of a curmudgeonly mathematics professor who comes to befriend his housekeeper and her young son. Like Kafka on the Shore, it also features a mystery from the past that the characters must uncover; overall, a delightful and touching work by one of Japan’s best modern authors.--Griffin
If you appreciated Kafka on the Shore as a work of magical realism, you might enjoy one of the earliest works to receive that label--Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Written under the Stalinist regime of the early 20th century, and not published until 1967, when the manuscript was smuggled to Paris, this book has it all: political satire, Satan as a socialite, a shape-shifting cat, witches flying by moonlight. One of the greats.--Griffin
