LEADER
John Riley has been conducting shared inquiry discussions for nearly 40 years, as an instructor at the Great Books Foundation and a teacher at Benedictine University and Morton College. John has led Classical Pursuits groups in discussions of modern and post-modern classics by Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Roberto Bolano, Gabriel Marquez and James Joyce.
BOOK
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
International Edition (Vintage, January 2005)
ISBN-13: 978-0099458326
Ever get the impression that some very weird forces are messing with you? Does it ever feel like the more preposterous your life becomes, the more preordained it feels? Does your subconscious reveal occasional glimpses of your destiny, which seem both plausible and absurd? It is a peculiar perch from which to view yourself.
As Haruki Murakami puts it: “In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward any more. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”
Murakami intertwines the survival stories of one young man (Kafka Tamura) and one old man (Satoru Nakata) and endows their journeys with the significance of greek tragedy. Erotic and spiritual, fanciful and realistic, profane and profound, Kafka on the Shore was hailed by John Updike as a “real page-turner, as well as an insistently metaphysical mind-bender.” A practitioner of “magical realism” in the vein of Marquez, Morrison and Kundera, Murakami is regarded as one of the great fiction writers of the new century.
Practical details
Once you register, you’ll get an order confirmation. We’ll send you the Zoom link and a welcome letter from your leader in the week ahead of the seminar starting.
Classical Pursuits will record this seminar, and make each session privately available to registered participants for up to two weeks after that session.
Online seminar payments are nonrefundable. Discount codes must be used at the time of purchase.
Seminar group sizes are a minimum of 7 and a maximum of 12. See full terms and conditions for Classical Pursuits online seminars. By registering for a seminar, you agree to abide by our code of conduct.
