The City and Its Uncertain Walls: The Sunday Times bestselling novel from the author of Norwegian Wood

· Random House
4.3
6 reviews
Ebook
464
Pages
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More
47% price drop on Sep 1

About this ebook

What will you find in the city?

READERS LOVE THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS

‘Felt like stepping into a dream’
‘I really loved getting lost in this book’
‘Everyone on this planet should read Murakami at least once in their lifetime’
‘Riveting and irresistible’
‘It’s magical, it’s wise . . . deeply comforting’
A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, a breathtaking new novel about the boundaries between worlds and individuals, from the Sunday Times bestseller.

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.

PRAISE FOR THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS
‘Quietly miraculous’ Telegraph
‘Bewitching’ Financial Times
‘Enveloping’ Independent

Ratings and reviews

4.3
6 reviews
Gavin Mcarthur
September 3, 2025
Re work of a previous book, but better!
Did you find this helpful?

About the author

Haruki Murakami (Author)
In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon.

In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Men Without Women, Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.

Philip Gabriel (Translator)
Philip Gabriel is the author of Mad Wives and Island Dreams: Shimao Toshio and the Margins of Japanese Literature and Spirit Matters: The Transcendent in Modern Japanese Literature and has translated many novels and short stories by the writer Haruki Murakami and other modern writers. He is recipient of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature (2001) for his translation of Senji Kuroi’s Life in the Cul-de-Sac, and the 2006 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore.

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.