A city without a name from which you cannot escape: That sounds familiar to readers of Haruki Murakami. Why tell almost the same story multiple times?
By Juliane Liebert
Anyone who likes to read Murakami often will be taken aback by the first pages of his new novel “The City and its Uncertain Wall.” A city without a name, surrounded by high walls where people have no shadows? Where unicorns come and go? A librarian in a library without a single book?
Isn’t this one of the two plot lines of Murakami’s previous novel “Hard-boiled Wonderland”? And in fact: Not only the world described, but also the plot in the first part of the book almost completely corresponds to parts of the 1985 novel. Only this time, instead of a spy story, the framework narrative is a love story between the 17-year-old narrator and his 16-year-old girlfriend , both also nameless.