¡°In the back of my throat was a small hard lump of air that I couldn¡¯t get rid of. Every time I tried to swallow something, it irritated me a bit,¡± says the narrator toward the end of Haruki Murakami¡¯s ¡°The City and Its Uncertain Walls.¡± This feeling of something lodged ¡ª not for the duration of a meal, but over a lifetime ¡ª is itself the fish bone in the windpipe of the author¡¯s latest novel.
After a 45-year career of nearly 20 novels and a handful of nonfiction books, it¡¯s clear that Murakami can¡¯t let some things go. The narrators in his fiction like jazz, women, whiskey and falling down real and symbolic rabbit holes into worlds filled with inscrutable rules. But ¡°The City and Its Uncertain Walls,¡± newly translated into English, is not just vaguely familiar, it¡¯s an explicit rerun, albeit with an alternate ending.
The City and Its Uncertain Walls, by Haruki Murakami. Translated by Philip Gabriel. 464 pages, KNOPF, Fiction.
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