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    The City and Its Uncertain Walls: A Novel
    The City and Its Uncertain Walls: A Novel
    The City and Its Uncertain Walls: A Novel
    Audiobook17 hours

    The City and Its Uncertain Walls: A Novel

    Written by Haruki Murakami

    Narrated by Brian Nishii

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A REAL SIMPLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the 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 our peculiar times.

    "Haruki Murakami invented 21st-century fiction." —The New York Times • "More than any author since Kafka, Murakami appreciates the genuine strangeness of our real world." —San Francisco Chronicle • "Murakami is masterful." —Los Angeles Times

    We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.

    Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world – a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along.

    The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.

    "Truth is not found in fixed stillness, but in ceaseless change/movement. Isn't this the quintessential core of what stories are all about?” —Haruki Murakami, from the afterword

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    TranslatorPhilip Gabriel
    Release dateNov 19, 2024
    ISBN9780593947555
    Author

    Haruki Murakami

    Haruki Murakami (Kioto, 1949) es uno de los pocos autores japoneses que han dado el salto de escritor de prestigio a autor con grandes ventas en todo el mundo. Tusquets Editores ha publicado todas sus novelas —Tokio blues. Norwegian Wood, Crónica del pájaro que da cuerda al mundo, 1Q84 y La muerte del comendador, entre otras—, cinco libros de relatos, y ensayos como Underground, De qué hablo cuando hablo de correr, De qué hablo cuando hablo de escribir o Música, sólo música, además de dos relatos bellamente ilustrados: La chica del cumpleaños y Tony Takitani. Murakami ha recibido numerosos premios, entre ellos el Noma, el Tanizaki, el Yomiuri, el Franz Kafka, el Jerusalem Prize o el Hans Christian Andersen, y su nombre suena reiteradamente como candidato al Nobel de Literatura. En España ha merecido el Premio Arcebispo Juan de San Clemente, la Orden de las Artes y las Letras (concedida por el Gobierno español), el Premi Internacional Catalunya 2011 y, recientemente, el Premio Princesa de Asturias de las Letras 2023. La ciudad y sus muros inciertos, su obra más reciente, es una novela melancólica y filosófica sobre el amor perdido y el autodescubrimiento.

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    Reviews for The City and Its Uncertain Walls

    4/5

    175 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5

      Jan 7, 2025

      I enjoyed this so much. A ghost story, a tangle of inner fears and outer lives, and what it takes to overcome and unite them. A tale in love with libraries, magic, and human nature.
    • 4/5

      Jan 8, 2025

      I felt frustrated on the first 100-150 pages or so. This wasn't the Murakami I was used to - he'd always weaved magic realism and inner monologues better than any author I'd read, but this first portion seemed so loose and confusing that I could barely stomach it.

      Once the protagonist grows up and moves to the small Mountain Town, I was glued to the pages and really started loving the story. Quiet little descriptions of coffee shops, jazz and libraries really resonated with me and helped me feel very tranquil and philosophical. The mysteries were well built and I desperately wanted to know more, just like the main character.

      I'm not sure I loved the ending, but I think the whole story is meant to be dream-like and almost a seminar on consciousness and our feelings. That is a very tricky line to walk, and it's not typically my favorite type of narrative, but Murakami (almost) hits it out of the park. I probably did myself a disservice by not reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, since these two books supposedly occupy the same space.

      Not my favorite of his, but certainly unforgettable (as are all his books). I have no idea what to rank this book out of 5, however and there's no chance I'd be bold enough to recommend to anybody unless they were a massive Murakami fan.
    • 4/5

      Nov 21, 2024

      The border between reality and the imaginary is explored in this novel. It begins with the teenage protagonist falling deeply in love with a girl his age, and the paths he follows after she disappears without an explanation. The two of them had imagined a walled town in considerable detail, and one way of dealing with her loss was for him to inhabit that town, which required him to leave his shadow behind. He was eventually able to regain his shadow and leave that town. After spending many years in Tokyo he found a job as librarian in a remote small town, where he is mentored by the former (and late) head librarian. This is a quiet, dreamy, and lengthy exploration of lost love, alienation, and sense of displacement. The main character says, "Some power might have separated me into two at some point... And thee me who's here now chose to be here. And somewhere is another me who chose to be there."
    • 2/5

      Dec 3, 2024

      Waited for this new release from the library. Intriguing at first and then it was boring. I'm not sure what this is ...

      I had very high expectations, I will admit.
    • 5/5

      Oct 4, 2024

      What is real, and what is not? In this world is there really something like a wall separating reality from the unreal? from The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami

      Haruki Murakami wrote The City and its Uncertain walls as a novela, published in 1980. He was unsatisfied with the story and regretted publishing it for he knew “something vital” was in it. He wanted to rewrite it and during the Covid-19 pandemic, rarely leaving his home, he finally tackled it. “For so long this work had felt like a small fish bone caught in my throat, something that bothered me,” he writes in the Afterword.

      It is a strange and wonderful book, original and unique. The protagonist flows between two realities, the world he was born into, and the world imagined by the girl he loved as a teen, a city where people leave their shadows behind to live in a timeless world with clocks without hands. In this world he works as a Dream Reader in a library.

      Which is the real world? In which world could fulfillment be found?

      There was a fierce split between the conscious and the unconscious, and I had to choose where I should belong. from The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami

      The narrator touches on what he enjoys– jazz music, libraries and books, blueberry muffins. He never forgets his lost teenage love and struggles to connect with others. He leaves one reality for another, still seeking the girl. It is a lonely life in each world he inhabits. His friends are the librarian’s ghost and a strange boy who can’t connect to the world he is in.

      “The real self and the shadow are essentially two sides of the same coin,” the ghost of a librarian tells him.

      Should you read this? What did I think?

      I will quote the narrator, talking about the Bible: “It’s an intriguing book, and I’ve learned and felt many things from reading it.” And he quotes, “People are like a breath; their days are like a fleeting shadow.” That is truth.

      Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.
    • 2/5

      Oct 26, 2024

      Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this novel prior to its release date of mid-November, 2024.
      What the heck!? I don't know how to explain this book so I'll just shoot out concepts from the novel. Shadows, souls, ghosts, libraries, unrequited love, space and time, memories. Get my drift? This story is all over the place and is often very repetitive. Hopefully, the published edition will have worked out these issues and hopefully a good editor condenses the length by half.
    • 4/5

      Sep 4, 2024

      It's Murakami! Do you like it or not? ??‍♀️
      At first, it felt a bit slow to me, but then it picked up pace. Towards the end, it declined a bit.
      Overall, it's good, but it could have been shorter. (Translated from Spanish)
    • 5/5

      Aug 22, 2024

      What more can I say....Murakami!!!! (Translated from Spanish)
    • 3/5

      Aug 2, 2024

      An extensive novel with a relatively simple plot, but around which there are episodes of varied themes with different degrees of interest and quality. Some, like chapter Two, are a complete poem (unicorns and mist). Others, on the opposite end.
      I rate it **/5. (Translated from Spanish)
    • 5/5

      Jul 2, 2024

      The only thing I can say is READ THIS BOOK, you won't be the same when you finish it. (Translated from Spanish)