The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel

I am very excited about this one. Our previous sci-fi columnist, Sally Adee, tipped it as one to watch out for in 2024 – it’s an expansion of a story Murakami published back in 1980, and which he returned to during the pandemic. It follows a man whose girlfriend has vanished, who sets out to find the imaginary walled city where her true self lives – but she has no memory of their life in the other world. “In an age when society is going through rattling changes, whether to stay holed up inside the wall or to go to the other side of the wall has become a greater proposition than ever,” Murakami has said.