This book is the most unusual development and romance novel we have ever read by Japan's cult author: timeless and placeless, full of fairy tales and myths, between dream and reality - and full of wisdom at the same time. "When my fifteenth birthday came, I left home to live in a distant, strange city in a corner of a small library. If I tell everything in order, it will probably take me a week. If instead I only list the important points first, it will take about the same amount of time. This might sound like the beginning of a fairy tale. But it is not a fairy tale. Not in any sense." The narrator of these lines is called Kafka Tamura, and his journey actually leads out of the real world and into his own inner self, along the banks of consciousness. A fateful prophecy, the story of Oedipus.