The City and Its Uncertain Walls cover art

The City and Its Uncertain Walls

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls

By: Haruki Murakami
Narrated by: Philip Gabriel - translation, Brian Nishii
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

The breathtaking new novel about the boundaries between worlds and individuals, from the internationally bestselling author of 1Q84.

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.

A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a parable for these strange times.

'It’s safe to say that there’s no one like Murakami' Literary Review

'No other author mixes domestic, fantastic and esoteric elements into such weirdly bewitching shades' Financial Times

'Murakami is a master storyteller and he knows how to keep us hooked' Sunday Times

©2024 Haruki Murakami (P)2024 Penguin Audio Editors Select Genre Fiction Horror Literary Fiction Magical Realism Metaphysical & Visionary World Literature Mind-bending Heartfelt Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Woman in the Dunes cover art
On the Calculation of Volume, Book I cover art
Short Stories cover art
The Fyodor Dostoyevsky Complete Collection cover art
A Man cover art
Under the Volcano cover art
Gogmagog cover art
The Castle cover art
The Tale of Genji, Volume 1 cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
If you like Murakami, I think you’re prepared for the unknown, and for the lack of resolution. This was not my favourite Murakami, but I still really enjoyed it and all it’s characters. I think I read someone describing it as like a child’s bedtime story and I agree.

Dream like

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Beautiful book one thing Library is not a berry! Annoying mispronunciation that could be avoided.

Library

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Murakami always seems to echo or speak to, just what I need at that time.

just what I needed

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, with its twists and turns and philosophical view of the world and how we exist within it. You'll need to just go with it but it reminded me of being read fairy tales by my mother as a child, whilst at the same time taking me back to studying philosophy at uni. Written in Murakami's lovely lyrical style, it is a dreamy book in every sense. Great performance by the narrator too.

Brilliantly bonkers

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Different version of a previous story, for that the start was in anticipation if this was a repetition or something else and even though somewhat predictable the narrative got better and better and kept me listening until the end..

Heard it before but new

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
His work often jumps hither and thither but this novel did so in a ragged way. Also the ending was dissapointing. The narrator had a pleasant voice but the characiters' accents were too similar and too variable. This should not be the first book of Murakami that you read.

Not his best work

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
As always, the reader enters a fever dream from which they are abruptly ejected, unsure of what is or was real or imagined.

Classic Murakami. More accessible than some.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
there's absolutely nothing to eat there. some rambling about dreams and gender attraction, ghibli movies are doing it so much better. utter waste of time.

pointless senseless waste of time

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
this book is continuing the story of Hard boiled wonderland & end of the world, so I recommed you listen that 1st.
I'm not too keen of the voice of this reader but getting used to it. Havent finished the book yet but it is pretty typical Murakami. Layered dream worlds where recipient has vast possibilities to analyse and dissect the story at own understandment.

Book two of Hard boiled wonderland...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I didn’t like the translation. I think it wasn’t direct from Japanese to English so the language seemed quite basic. This book was very long without getting much resolve. I also find it frustrating that the two love interests of the protagonist never even got names? Only one woman in this entire book was given a name.

The ending was a let down

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews