Closer Look Book Club meets throughout the year to discuss novels and other works of fiction. To participate in a Book Club conversation, all you need to do is read the book and then join us in the Dorothy Rubel Room at the Poetry Center. Copies of books are available for purchase at the Poetry Center’s gift kiosk. No sign-up is necessary: the Club is free and open to the public, and you’re welcome to participate in as many or as few meetings as you like. For more information, email Cybele Knowles at knowles@email.arizona.edu.

This spring, the Book Club continues reading narratives translated into English.

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. Our discussion will be led by the book’s translator, J. Philip Gabriel, who is also a professor in the UA East Asian Studies department.