Kafka on the Shore

by Murakami Haruki

Rating: 9/10

You sit at the edge of the world,
I am in a crater that is no more.
Words without letters
Standing in the shadow of the door.

The moon shines down on a sleeping lizard,
Little fish rain down from the sky.
Outside the window there are soldiers,
steeling themselves to die.

Refrain
Kafka sits in a chair by the shore,
Thinking of the pendulum that moves the world,
it seems.
When your heart is closed,
The shadow of the unmoving Sphinx,
Becomes a knife that pierces your dreams.

The drowning girl's fingers
Search for the entrance stone, and more.
Lifting the hem of her azure dress,
She gazes---
at Kafka on the shore.

Tamura Kafka runs away from home on his fifteenth birthday. Above him the shadow of a prophecy like in a Greek tragedy and the memory of a mother and a sister who he's not seen for eleven years. Kafka runs away, and goes to live in a Library.

Norwegian Wood

by Murakami Haruki

Rating: 8/10

What makes us most normal is knowing that we're not normal.
Reiko

The protagonist/narrator, Tōru Watanabe, remembers the time of his youth, about the end of Sixties, when he wasn't able to find his path, and let himself live, cultivating a few of strange friendships, unconscious of being accomplishing the hard transition to adulthood.