In this book, Haruki Murakami takes his readers to a journey where they may experience a thin line between forgotten memories and existential musings. The City and Its Uncertain Walls was first released in April 2023 but it was all set for English reading audience in November 2024. The book is built on a short story written by the author himself in 1980s.
I’m new to his works, before this, I only read two of his works – Norwegian Wood & Kafka on the Shore. And as far as my understanding goes, the current work has some elements from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World but since I haven’t read it so for me the experience this work was totally new, which means that the plot and the characters did stay with me even when I finished reading the book.
The Plot: Two Realities
An unnamed protagonist (in his teens) falls in love with a young girl. From her, he gets to know about a mysterious city, situated somewhere at the outskirts, where one must pay a “strange” price to enter the city – their shadow! As the plot moves, he finds himself within the city as he is looking for the girl, who has suddenly stopped exchanging letters with him.
In part II, the same boy, now man is living not in that city but in regular world. Not happy with his current job and life’s choices or maybe experiencing a midlife crisis, he decides to relocate to a small village and accepts a position of a librarian. Here he meets people – another librarian, a teen boy who is also a voracious reader, a woman (of similar age) who runs a coffee shop – with whom he experiences some strange and weird happenings.
In the final and concluding part, he again finds himself in the mysterious city, following his regular routine of “reading dreams”. With each progression of the plot, we find the protagonist navigating his dual existence:
- one, with the walled city, and
- two, in the real world.
Maybe with this technique, the author wants to surface how the main character is weary of the world and so trying to seek solace in these fabricated realities.
An Ethereal, Dreamy Journey
When I was reading The City and Its Uncertain Walls, I felt as if it’s one of those long runs where the initial few miles may leave me questioning why I enrolled in the first place, as the novel’s pacing feels ambiguous and tiring. But as the story unfolds, a rhythm sets in – a zone where the dreamlike prose, interconnected storyline and surreal atmosphere take hold.
The novel then mirrors the sensation of pushing through initial doubt into a state of flow, where every piece of the narrative clicks into place. Quite like the momentum that is gained after struggling through the initial few miles in distance running.
Another thing that I could relate with the book is the depiction of winters in a small-town as I also spend my growing years in quiet and snow-covered streets of a small hill station. Depiction of the walled city is also very apt, the isolated landscapes of a small winter town offer both – solace and a sense of eerie detachment. And I think this balance makes the novel resonate long after the final page.
Takeaway
The novel stiches up multiple plotlines together, and in doing so, some are tightly connected while others are left intentionally unresolved in form of an open thread for readers to give their subjective ending. I personally like adding or ending a novella with my philosophical closure. Over all, I enjoyed reading this book and looking forward to read more from Murakami’s vault.
