Hey, it's Amk here's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. When I got an advanced copy of the new

Harukumurukami novel, the city and its uncertain walls, it sat for a while on a stack, on my desk,

like so many other books do. But I picked it up and started thumbing through it, and all of a sudden

I found myself entranced. His language just has a way of

pulling you in, which I'm sure is not used to his longtime fans. Now, Murcombe doesn't do many

interviews, but I got the chance to ask him some questions over email. You can check that out at

NPR.org. But I also spoke with his longtime editor, Lexi Bloom, about what it's like working with him, how his voice and his writing has evolved over the years, and how this new novel has him seriously considering his mortality.

That's up ahead.

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Lexi Bloom, thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

What was the first Murakami book you read?

The first book by Murakami that I read was a wild sheep chase.

And it totally blew my mind.

In 1995, there wasn't a lot available to read from Murakami. It had only been six years since a wild sheep chase had been published in English, then by Kodontah International. What I did because he was also being published in The New Yorker at that point was I got a subscription to the New Yorker.

And I used to play this somewhat embarrassing game with myself.

This is the true sign of a translation nerd.

So every time there was a new story by Murakami in The New Yorker, and there was a fair amount at that point because Bill Buford had just taken over the fiction department, and he was a big Murakami fan and was publishing a fair amount.

So I'd read the story first before I would look at the translator to see if I could figure out who had translated it, because I was aware at that point that he had three translators at that time, Alfred Burnbaum, J. Rubin, and Phil Gabriel, and they all had really distinct styles.

...