Book: Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)

I never liked books of the magical realism genre.

I bought Marquez's A Hundred Years of Solitude years ago and I still haven't gone past the first chapter. I figured it would probably take me 100 years of utmost solitude before I would pick that book up again.

Last week, I bought the English translation of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. I didn't know why I chose that book. Probably because there were not much to choose from. Japanese bookstores have only limited display of English titles, and many of them are translations from Japanese originals.

I thought I would find Murakami's book a rip-off.

I was wrong.

A real page-turner.

As with other magical realism books, one has to suspend disbelief for a while. Tuna and leeches raining from the sky. Cats and crow talking.

The genius of Murakami lies on his ability to get his readers indulge on the surreal, strange world he created, making it hard for them to separate the real from the metaphor.