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. As their parallel odysseys unravel, cats converse with people fish tumble from the sky a ghost like pimp deploys a hegel spouting girl of the night a forest harbours soldiers apparently un aged since world war ii. There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle one of many which combine to create an elegant and dreamlike masterpiece.