From the bestselling author ofNorwegian WoodandHard-Boiled Wonderland & the End of the Worldcomes a love story, a quest, an ode to books & to the libraries that house them, & a parable for our peculiar times."Haruki Murakami invented 21st-century fiction."—The New York Times• "More than any author since Kafka, Murakami appreciates the genuine strangeness of our real world."—San Francisco Chronicle• "Murakami is masterful."—Los Angeles TimesWe begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age & on a journey between the real world & an other world – a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter & who must remain behind, & where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind & ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass & the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along.The City & Its Uncertain Wallsis a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers."Truth is not found in fixed stillness, but in ceaseless change/movement. Isn't this the quintessential core of what stories are all about?”—Haruki Murakami, from the afterword°°°HARUKI MURAKAMIwas born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. He recently received theCino Del Duca World Prize, whose previous recipients include Jorge Luis Borges, Ismail Kadare, Mario Vargas Llosa, & Joyce Carol Oates.