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From the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World comes a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for these peculiar times.
The long-awaited new novel from Haruki Murakami, his first in six years, revisits a Town his readers will remember, a place where a Dream Reader reviews dreams and where our shadows become untethered from our selves. A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for these strange post-pandemic times, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature's most important writers.
What was the last book you bought, where did you buy it (online, indie bookstore) and how soon will you read it?
Purchased on Monday The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami and Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik. Probably won't read them for a couple of weeks. Too many other books loading up my bookshelves. But they looked...
-Brenda_D_Andre
"Bestseller Murakami unspools an intoxicating fantasy of a parallel world...It's an astonishing achievement." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Another beguilingly enigmatic tale from Murakami, complete with jazz, coffee, Borgesian twists, the Beatles, and other trademark motifs... .Murakami blends science fiction, gothic novel, noir mystery, horror (think Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film Pulse), and coming-of-age story... . [An] elegant fable that deftly weaves ordinary reality—'something you have to choose by yourself, out of several possible alternatives'—with a shadow world that is at once eerie and beautiful. Astonishing, puzzling, and hallucinatory as only Murakami can be, and one of his most satisfying tales." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"At times a meditation on romance, reality vs. fantasy, ghosts, and the power of written words, this metaphysical novel examines the questionable value of timekeeping while thoroughly exploring unconditional love, self-imposed constraints, and deaths of one's body and soul." —Library Journal (starred review)
This information about The City and Its Uncertain Walls was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Elena Seibert
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1949. He grew up in Kobe and then moved to Tokyo, where he attended Waseda University. After college, Murakami opened a small jazz bar, which he and his wife ran for seven years.
His first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won the Gunzou Literature Prize for budding writers in 1979. He followed this success with two sequels, Pinball, 1973 and A Wild Sheep Chase, which all together form "The Trilogy of the Rat."
Additionally, Murakami has written several works of nonfiction. After the Hanshin earthquake and the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack in 1995, he interviewed surviving victims, as well as members of the religious cult responsible. From these interviews, he published two nonfiction books in Japan, which were selectively combined to form ...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Haruki Murakami's Website
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