The New Book From One of the World’s Greatest Writers Revisits an Early Masterpiece—and Improves It

The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a retelling of a short piece of the same title that Haruki Murakami wrote as a fledgling author.

The novel is primarily a novel about selfhood, how we construct it and maintain it, often at the expense of our own happiness and the welfare of others.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls’’ three parts takes up the middle and longest of the novel’s three parts.

Unlike Murakami 's other works, its approach is leisurely, textured, and much less plot-driven.

The novel's denouement asks: What is the walled town? A prison or utopia? Life or death? The past or the future?.