The castle

The Castle (German: Das Schloß) is a novel by Franz Kafka. In it a protagonist, known only as K., struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities of a castle who govern the village where he wants to work as a land surveyor. Kafka died before finishing the work, but suggested it would end with the Land Surveyor dying in the village; the castle notifying him on his death bed that his "legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there".

In the bizarre world of Franz Kafka, salemen turn into giant bugs, apes give lectures at college academies and nightmarkes probe the mysteries of modern humanity's unhappiness. More than any other modern writer in world literature, Kafka captures the loneliness and misery that fill the lives of so many humans. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories reveals the author's extraordinary talent in a variety of forms -- prose poems, short stories, sketches, allegories, and novelettes...

Kafka on the Shore (海辺のカフカ, Umibe no Kafuka ) was described by John Updike as a "real page-turner, as well as an insistently metaphysical mind-bender." Since its 2005 English language release , the novel has received mostly positive reviews and critical acclaim, including a spot on the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2005 and the World Fantasy Award.

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. This book follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Unabridged edition
The opening pages of a Haruki Murakami novel can be like the view out an airplane window onto tarmac. But at some point between page three and fifteen--it's page thirteen in Kafka On The Shore--the deceptively placid narrative lifts off, and you find yourself breaking through clouds at a tilt, no longer certain where the plane is headed or if the laws of flight even apply.

Joining the rich literature of runaways, Kafka On The Shore follows the solitary, self-disciplined schoolboy Kafka Tamura as he hops a bus from Tokyo to the randomly chosen town of Takamatsu, reminding himself at each step that he has to be "the world¹s toughest fifteen-year-old." He finds a secluded private library in which to spend his days--continuing his impressive self-education--and is befriended by a clerk and the mysteriously remote head librarian, Miss Saeki, whom he fantasizes may be his long-lost mother. Meanwhile, in a second, wilder narrative spiral, an elderly Tokyo man named Nakata veers from his calm routine by murdering a stranger. An unforgettable character, beautifully delineated by Murakami, Nakata can speak with cats but cannot read or write, nor explain the forces drawing him toward Takamatsu and the other characters.