The publication of a new novel by Haruki Murakami is a major event. The Japanese author’s large and enthusiastic fanbase is matched by widespread critical acclaim and an impressive inventory of awards. Tickets for his live events sell out in minutes. Yet, where the literary world moves in cycles of fashion, Murakami’s work, like that of Canadian superstar Margaret Atwood, eschews easy categorisation. Since the 1979 publication of his fiction debut, the fragmentary Hear The Wind Sing, this prolific writer has refused to stay in a single lane in terms of style, form and genre. 

Norwegian Wood, published in 1987 and the book that made Murakami’s name internationally, marked a deepening of his early concerns; notably, frustrated love and the impact of death on his young characters’ lives, and was loaded with western pop-culture references. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1995) starts out as noir thriller, describing the disappearance of a seemingly ordinary woman, only to spiral off in multiple directions. Kafka On The Shore (2002) took the author further into Lynchian territory with its mix of social realism, classical allusions and dystopian fantasy. 

For Murakami’s detractors, who find his best-known novels bloated, unresolved and implausible, there are alternative options; namely After The Quake (2000), spare stories exploring the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake, and short memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007) which evolved from his love for long-distance running. Now 75, Murakami’s first novel in six years, The City And Its Uncertain Walls, is about to hit bookshops, with his legions of readers primed for the tale of a mysterious disappearance, and a search culminating in a dream-like alternative reality.

The City And Its Uncertain Walls is published by Harvill Secker on Tuesday 19 November.