The City and Its Uncertain Walls

A Novel

By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator

Narrated by: Brian Nishii

"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 to The City and Its Uncertain Walls

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.

Critic reviews

A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year

"An elegant fable that deftly weaves ordinary reality. . . . 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)

"A masterpiece. . . . 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

"One of the reasons Murakami inspires such devotion is the porous nature of his work. Fables allow space for readers to place themselves within the text, to bring their own visions into the author's imagination. Murakami writes with a light touch: but his country's painful history is conjured here too. . . . Others may percieve this novel and its motifs very differently: but that is high praise. The greatest books, after all, are those which enable us to enter their worlds, just as Murakami's narrator enters his mysterious libraries." —Telegraph

"Haruki Murakami’s latest novel is a profound work of love, loss and yearning that exceeds the highs of his previous works. It’s a book that further cements him as a leading figure in modern magical realism, and one of our most interesting authors today." —NPR

"These eerie landscapes of snow, forests and torrents is beautifully evoked as Mr. Murakami the seasoned storyteller of loss, loneliness and passing time takes charge." —Wall Street Journal

"One of his best. It feels at once sweeping and intimate, grand and tender, quiet and charged with feeling. The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a paean to books, reading and libraries, an investigation into the relationship between romance and realism, and a timely fable about how relationships, societies and communities both protect themselves against threats and foster beauty and truth." —Boston Globe

"Without giving too much of this glorious novel away, what emerges from those four deacdes of thought is a striking, moving meditation on the price of isolation, the nourishment of stories and how the most important things in our lives reach us in slow, unexpected ways." —BookPage

"The City and Its Uncertain Walls offers a fun, fantastical trip into the inexplicable corners of the human heart." —Toronto Star