Jan. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Haruki Murakami's latest novel features talking tomcats, fish tumbling from stormy skies and Johnnie Walker, the whisky icon, sprung to life in a silk topper and skin-tight pants. Even by his own far-out standards, ``Kafka on the Shore'' is surreal.

It opens as Kafka Tamura prepares to run away from home on the eve of his 15th birthday. A bookish loner, Kafka is bound for a warm island town south of Tokyo, where he hopes to ``live in a corner of a small library.''

``It sounds a little like a fairy tale,'' Kafka admits of his story. ``But it's no fairy tale, believe me. No matter what sort of spin you put on it.''

In fact, it's more of a Greek tragedy, retold in the Japanese author's distinctively eclectic style and played out against a backdrop of global pop culture.

Not only is Kafka running from his father's Oedipal prophecy, he's searching for the mother who abandoned him as an infant, and for the sister she took with her. Inevitably, patricide, mother-love and sister-love stalk his adventures.

The story of a second protagonist, Nakata, unfolds in alternate chapters. He's a kindly old gent, spooked as well by his childhood, who now spends his days tracking lost cats. His feline charges chat to him and provide necessary comic relief.

Filial Rage

Gradually, the two narratives move tantalizingly nearer until midway through the book when Kafka's father is found murdered in his Tokyo home. Time and geography set Kafka in the clear, yet might Nakata have killed him? The answer remains elusive, although one bloody scene suggests that Kafka's filial rage migrated and lodged itself temporarily in Nakata.

This is Murakami's 10th novel and it was published in Japan just months before the appearance of his translation of ``The Catcher in the Rye'' in April 2003. In his youthful earnestness, Kafka Tamura has much in common with J.D. Salinger's teen hero, and the novel ends as he heads home to Tokyo less than a month later, a more mature individual.

In a rare interview with the ``The Paris Review,'' Murakami, 53, confessed to being baffled by the weirdness of his own stories. The grandson of a Buddhist priest, he once ran a Tokyo jazz club, and is today a keen marathon runner -- flouting the cliche image of a desk-bound dreamer. Yet for all the wildly imagined, hallucinogenic content, his stories seep through national and linguistic barriers: they appeal because there's nothing local about alienation, urban ennui and the search for love.

``Kafka on the Shore,'' translated by Philip Gabriel, is published in the U.K. by Harvill (12.99 pounds, 505 pages) and in the U.S. by Knopf ($25.95).

Last Updated: January 3, 2005 02:55 EST