the fans of Haruki Murakami You can expect a super news! The 74-year-old author released his first full-length novel in six years on Thursday, titled "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," published by Shinchosha Publishing.
This story is a radically revised version of a novella that was originally published in a magazine by the author in 1980 but was never released as a book.
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During a recent interview, Murakami stated that he now has the ability to write novels exactly as he wishes, and that this is the ideal time to rewrite that story.
The original novel, which has the same name as the new book, was published a year after Murakami made his professional debut by winning the 1979 Gunzo New Writers' Prize for his first novel "Hear the Wind Sing”
Fans are looking forward to reading this new version!
Acclaimed writer Haruki Murakami never planned to become a novelist. After writing his first novel, 'Pinball, 1973', he still considered himself inexperienced in this area.
What consecrated him as a fiction writer was the book 'Hear the Wind Sing'. And the news is that one of his unpublished works, 'The city and its uncertain walls', came to life and was recently released.
Murakami had already written this novel a few years ago, but stated that he had not published it sooner because he felt that he was still not satisfied with the final result.
However, he stressed that the work contains important elements for him, in addition to carrying the structure of the original story, in which the protagonist is guided by You to a city surrounded by walls.
This isn't the first time the author has revisited one of his past works. In 1985, he had already rewritten “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World”. At that time, Murakami stated that he was still learning to write and felt limited by his abilities.
But he didn't give up and improved with each work, until in 2000, with “Sydney” – a non-fiction book about the Sydney Olympics – he finally found his own style of writing. From then on came other hits, such as “Kafka on the Shore” and “1Q84”, and Murakami felt ready to revisit “The city and its uncertain walls”.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Murakami has found more time to stay home and reflect. It was then that he decided to take “The city and its uncertain walls” out of an old drawer and work on it.
The story begins with 17-year-old Boku (I) and his friend Kimi Junior (You) building a mysterious walled city. But to enter the city, people need to leave their shadows behind. This is a problem for Watashi (Other Self), who needs to get rid of his left shadow in order to enter the city.
After some time, Boku grows up to be a 40-year-old man. Watashi is faced with a difficult decision.
Walls are a recurring theme in Murakami's work, and in his 2009 Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech for the Freedom of the Individual in Society, he stated that he would always rather be on the side of the broken egg than the high solid wall.
It was in his book “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”, published in 1994, that Murakami expressed his intriguing philosophy. The work is full of intriguing concepts, including passing through walls.
The writer claims that for him, a wall represents the boundary between this world and the world on the other side. And the people who manage to get through those walls are like key devices in his writing, being very important beings.
For Murakami, walls have many forms. There are those that separate consciousness and unconsciousness, reality and illusion. And then there are the walls that divide the real world, like the Berlin Wall or the wall that divides Palestine and Israel, which left a lasting impression on Murakami.
The most interesting thing is that the meaning of the walls in his books changes according to the people inside them. It's fascinating to see how he uses this concept to add depth to his novels.
So, were you curious to embark on this literary adventure?