Oneirism, Alternative Realities, And Covid-19 Pandemic in Murakami Haruki’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls (2024)

Murakami Haruki’s literary production can be associated with oneirism from different perspectives. The liminal boundary that in authorial works divides ‘his world’ (kocchi no sekai) from the ‘other world’ (acchi no sekai) constitutes the focus of a narrative between truth and fiction, facts and dreamlike visions. This impairment in reality testing can thus be interpreted as a multifaceted psychotic disorder, in which the delusions, hallucinations and mnestic dysfunctions to which the protagonists are subjected find manifestation in the “double world” that characterizes the authorial production, undoubtedly influenced by magic realism. It is the identity crisis of the contemporary era, in which the mind is tormented by the freneticism of daily life, social pressures and the present insecurity. Murakami’s most recent novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls (2024), indulges in the author’ s most common literary tropes by adding to the psychological distress of the protagonists the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic that saw the genesis of the work. The novel explores the sense of loss, regret, and social withdrawal provoked by urban barriers in the claustrophobic context that compels the search for a dreamscape in which to take refuge. Through an interdisciplinary approach that brings into dialogue literary criticism and an interest in psychopathological sequelae related to the fluidity of the present and the social anxiety that permeates the contemporaneity, this paper aims to explore how Murakami’s alternative realities are manifestations of hallucinatory psychosis reflective of social turmoil and political chaos, a split, if not an actual dissociative disorder of the individual unable to integrate into the society of which he or she is a part.