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The City and Its Uncertain Walls

The Sunday Times bestselling novel from the author of Norwegian Wood

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The City and Its Uncertain Walls

By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator
Narrated by: Brian Nishii
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Brought to you by Penguin.

The breathtaking new novel about the boundaries between worlds and individuals, from the internationally bestselling author of 1Q84.

When a young man’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives. His search will lead him to take a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own.

When he finally makes it to the walled city, a shadowless place of horned beasts and willow trees, he finds his beloved working in a different library – a dream library. But she has no memory of their life together in the other world and, as the lines between reality and fantasy start to blur, he must decide what he’s willing to lose.

A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a parable for these strange times.

'It’s safe to say that there’s no one like Murakami' Literary Review

'No other author mixes domestic, fantastic and esoteric elements into such weirdly bewitching shades' Financial Times

'Murakami is a master storyteller and he knows how to keep us hooked' Sunday Times

© Haruki Murakami 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024

 Asian Creators Editors Select Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Horror Literary Fiction Magical Realism Metaphysical & Visionary World Literature Mind-bending Heartfelt Fiction
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Critic reviews

A masterpiece... quietly miraculous… The greatest books…are those which enable us to enter their worlds, just as Murakami’s narrator enters his mysterious libraries
No other author mixes domestic, fantastic and esoteric elements into such weirdly bewitching shades.
Regular readers will delight in the Easter eggs nested in an unsettling quest spun from Murakami’s long-patented dream logic
An enveloping magical realist story
A mysterious, magical book that reveals itself like a secret being said. Murakami offers a beguiling look at self and the lengths we go to for love
[Murakami’s] imagination is one of a kind, and his blend of pop culture, postmodernism and Japanese mythology is a wholly unique contribution to literature
Murakami blends the whimsical and the threatening with the skill of that other pre-eminent Japanese visionary, Hayao Miyazaki (A.K. Blakemore)
Spellbinding...oddly irresistible
A sublime meditation on time, age and love
One of his best. It feels at once sweeping and intimate, grand and tender, quiet and charged with feeling
All stars
Most relevant
Different version of a previous story, for that the start was in anticipation if this was a repetition or something else and even though somewhat predictable the narrative got better and better and kept me listening until the end..

Heard it before but new

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His work often jumps hither and thither but this novel did so in a ragged way. Also the ending was dissapointing. The narrator had a pleasant voice but the characiters' accents were too similar and too variable. This should not be the first book of Murakami that you read.

Not his best work

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As always, the reader enters a fever dream from which they are abruptly ejected, unsure of what is or was real or imagined.

Classic Murakami. More accessible than some.

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classic Murikami territory. a mostly normal character in a mostly normal world where something else creeps in: a surreal or magical otherness co-exists on a disconcertingly even footing.
it makes for a fascinatingly engaging tale wonderful phrases and observations. but is this more about our inner selves and our subconscious and emotiins; or is it more an enquiry into the nature of reality and truth, and how we tell what is 'real'? I'm not entirely sure and am worried I might just need to read it again!

hmmm.....

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This was another predictable book from Murakami. No complaints though. I love how he articulates a mundane life. For someone like me who lives a hectic life, this pace of story telling really helps me unwind. Great stuff.

Another masterpiece from the teller of the mundane

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