Book Review: 'The City And Its Uncertain Walls' By Haruki Murakami — A Haunting, Slow-Burning Journey Through Memory And Identity

What happens when a book stays with you for more than four decades? ‘The City And Its Uncertain Walls’! That’s what happens.

The City And Its Uncertain Walls was initially a short story written by the celebrated author Haruki Murakami in 1980. He calls it ‘a long short story’ or ‘novella’. So intrigued he was by the idea that the idea refused to leave a compartment of his brain for forty years. He revisited it during the pandemic and that led to this full-fledged book a few months ago, which was translated by Philip Gabriel in English. One must remember, always, that whatever Murakami we read as an English reader is translated work.

For Murakami, the pandemic proved to be a boon that helped him complete an finished task. ‘For so long this work had felt like a small fish bone caught in my throat, something that bothered me. For me – both as a writer and a person – this little bone was very significant. Rewrting the work for the first time some forty years, and stopping by that town again, made me acutely aware of this.’ (sic).

Typically Murakami, the book swirls you into a journey of unknown, unknowingly. The phrases and meta phrases, the characters and their takes, everything is metaphysical. The book’s narrator constructs a narrative that is layered with duality — between dream and reality, past and present, light and darkness — that mirrors the protagonist’s psychological fragmentation. His emotional trajectory is shaped by two haunting figures: the ghost of a former librarian whose family tragedy parallels his own, and a lost love. Fleeting through lost towns of yesteryears, graveyards and stark realities of today, the protoganist/narrator does feel lost and sad to the reader. Especially so when the love of his life warns him -  ‘The real me lives there, in that town surrounded by a wall. The me here with you now isn’t the real me. It’s only a stand-in. Like a wandering shadow.’ (sic)

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The book is surely slower than most of his recent books. Even a Murakami fan like me needed three visits to the book to complete it. At times the fantasy level of the book that is constantly in fight with the reality sort of depletes your energies. While you are aware that the book is a representation of the inner war of the narrator and the tango of real, surreal and dreams is nothing but the inner conflict of the hero, there are times when you wonder where is all this going and put the book down, only to revisit.

The ’town’ that the girl lives, ceases to exist when he bids her ‘farewell’ – which means he has conquered his mind. The book aptly ends – ‘I closed my eyes, focused all the power within me, and, in a single breath, blew out the candle. Darkness descended. A darkness deeper than anything, a darkness ever so soft.’ (sic).

To conclude, Murakami fans will enjoy this revisit by him - a creation which he obviously is in love with himself. However, quite a few might find it slow and even boring at places.

Book: The City And Its Uncertain Walls

Author: Haruki Murakami

Publisher: Harvill Secker

Pages: 464

Price: ₹ 1,499