Mr. Nakamura is killed by another character in order to further his cat-soul flute; that character, Johnnie Walker, is shortly thereafter killed by one of this novel's protagonists.
In Chapter 8 of this work, a Stanford-educated professor uses the metaphor of a freight train car to explain the difference between "loss" and "lack", while in Chapter 19, one character uses T.S. Eliot's term "hollow men" to refer to a pair of women who attempt to file a complaint about restroom equality. Late in this work, one character is guided to an "expressionless" town in a basin by a pair of lost soldiers; that character hears lines like "The shadow of the unmoving Sphinx/Becomes a knife that pierces your dreams" while listening to the titular song. Another character predicts a rain of sardines and mackerel while sitting in a police station, and a third character, a trucker who becomes enamored of Beethoven's (*) Archduke Trio, receives information about an "entrance stone" from Colonel Sanders. Mr. Nakamura is killed by another character in order to further his cat-soul flute; that character, Johnnie Walker, is shortly thereafter killed by one of this novel's protagonists. An incident on the Rice Bowl Hill left that protagonist devoid of memory; this novel's other protagonist spends time at the Komura Memorial Library, where he meets the transgendered Oshima and his possible mother, Miss Saeki, after running away from home and taking an alias that means "Crow". For 10 points, identify this novel which tells the intertwined stories of the cat-finding Mr. Nakata and the title character, surnamed Tamura, a work of Haruki Murakami.
In Chapter 8 of this work, a Stanford-educated professor uses the metaphor of a freight train car to explain the difference between "loss" and "lack", while in Chapter 19, one character uses T.S. Eliot's term "hollow men" to refer to a pair of women who attempt to file a complaint about restroom equality.
{Kafka} on the {Shore} [or {Umibe no Kafuka}]