About:
The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami is a magical-realism novel about a young couple trying to find themselves between worlds that might or might not, exist. Mr. Murakami is a best-selling Japanese author and translator.
- 464 pages
- Publisher : Knopf
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 0593801970
My rating for The City and Its Uncertain Walls – 4
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More books by Haruki Murakami*
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Thoughts:
In the afterward, the author mentions that this book started as a short story about 40 years ago, but he was never happy with it. I’ve never read the short story, but like many good books, this one is relevant no matter when, or at what age you’re reading it.
It took me a bit to get into The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami (translated by Philip Gabriel) since at certain parts I had no idea who was telling the story. I don’t speak Japanese so I don’t know if it’s a gender-neutral language or not, but in English, it was difficult to discern. It took me about one-third of the book to get a handle on it. The stories which take place between the two worlds, however, were not confusing at all.
The whole story has a dreamlike feeling, I was never sure what’s real and what’s not, or if everything is real or not. The book reminded me of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, two realities, one possible fictional where time stands still, a magical world, clocks, shadows with their own, and magical creatures.
The book has an intriguing concept, I don’t think it is too original but once you get into it the narrative starts making sense. Mr. Murakami taps Gabriel García Márquez as the master of fictional realism whose separation between reality and the fantastical is clouded. The book blurs consciousness, subconscious, and our imagination showing us the power of them to create our reality.
Synopsis:
After meeting at an essay writing contest, a 17-year-old boy falls in love with a 16-year-old girl. The girl, however, tells him she only exists in a city beyond a wall. The boy writes down, in detail, the description of the city and then the girl disappears.
The boy, now a man, arrives in the city imagined by the girl, but now he has to separate himself from his shadow. He started working in a library, reading dreams with his assistant, the girl he fell in love with years ago, but she is still 16.
The man managed to escape the city and is working in a small library in a small Japanese town. There he meets a ghost, a teenage boy who can memorize books, and even a girlfriend. The boy knows about the city beyond the wall and makes a deal with the boy.
Buy The City and Its Uncertain Walls from Amazon.com*
More books by Haruki Murakami*
More books translated by Philip Gabriel*
Zohar – Man of La Book
Disclaimer: I got this book for free
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