30-04-2025
Review of The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Haruki Murakami's The City And Its Uncertain Walls is at one level a gentle love story whilst also holding deep philosophic undertones. The Buddhist idea of the shadow representing repressed emotions, negative aspects of the self and the illusory nature of experiences runs through the narrative. The wall symbolises something which is there and yet not there. It is perhaps this complexity which made the author rework the story over a period of more than 40 years.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part intersperses the narration between the past and an ambiguous present. The second part deals with strange and surreal encounters in a real world. The third part seems to suggest that the real and unreal are only in the mind. It is faith and belief which sustain both.
When the reclusive, nameless protagonist, a 16-year-old boy, meets an equally introverted 15-year-old girl, both find they can converse freely with each other. They talk endlessly about her dreams, write long letters, and at 17, the boy is hopelessly in love. The girl confesses that she is not real but a stand-in, a wandering shadow. Her real self lives in a city with high walls.
She describes this mysterious place at great length and tells him that the only way to get there is by wishing for it from the heart. She works there in a library and if he ever comes there, he could get a position where she would always be by his side but she would not remember him or them. Some months later, she vanishes, leaving him devastated and not able to have a meaningful relationship with any other woman.
Of memory and consciousness
When he is 45, he suddenly finds himself at the gates of the strange city. Leaving his shadow behind, he enters and becomes the dream reader. The girl, still a teenager, is his assistant but does not remember him. The quintessential Murakami element emerges when the shadow starts putting emotional pressure on him to leave the town. Assuming a psychic consciousness, it convinces him that the wall is nothing but fear, the city an imagination and the whole thing an illusion.
Back in the real world, reunited with the shadow, a dream leads him to a small mountain town, unknown yet familiar. The patron of a library mentors him and takes him through strange experiences making him wonder if memory and consciousness can exist without a body. This section is the longest and tends to get dense.
The third part takes us to a socially dysfunctional teenager who is nameless and has an eidetic memory. His power to concentrate and absorb go beyond the normal.
Overhearing the protagonist's description of the walled city, he wishes to go there perhaps because no social skills are necessary there. This character is similar to the boy in Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but is more a philosophical concept than a social misfit. He symbolises the incompleteness felt at times by everybody.
Dose of magical realism
The protagonist is dragged back to the city as he feels a strong sense of responsibility for the boy. Their merging together makes both of them complete. The relationship makes both of them realise and come to terms with their incompleteness. The boy who is perhaps autistic develops empathy while the protagonist becomes capable of unconditional compassion. Their separation marks a kind of realisation and liberation for both.
Unlike other Murakami narratives, the dreams here are not used to bring out repression in the form of erotica. The women the protagonist feels an affinity for are all nameless and the physical aspect is completely taken out of the relationship. Love is pure and unadulterated.
In this exercise in magical realism, it is only the literary skill of a Murakami that can hold the attention of the reader through a complex narrative, sometimes beyond the realm of not one but more than one reality. The abstract nature of the book does not in any way take away from the gentle and poignant handling of relationships. The book is a fascinating read.
The reviewer has been a psephologist and a publisher who now focuses on her writing.
The City and Its Uncertain Walls Haruki Murakami, trs Philip Gabriel Harvill Secker ₹1,399
