Phil Gabriel's Translation of Murakami's Speech on the Meaning of Walls

The Guardian has published a translation of Murakami Haruki's speech given at the Welt Prize award ceremony. Murakami talks about the role of walls in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but also mentions the "wall-and-egg" speech he gave in Jerusalem.

Here is a short teaser:
"Sometimes it seems to me that we destroy one wall only to build another. It could be an actual wall, or an invisible wall that surrounds the mind. There are walls that tell us not to go any further from where we are, and walls that tell others not to come in. One wall finally collapses, the world looks different, and we breathe a sigh of relief, only to discover that another wall has been erected in another part of the world – a wall of ethnicity, of religion, a wall of intolerance, of fundamentalism, a wall of greed, a wall of fear. Are we unable to live without a system of walls?"

 Escape from reality … Haruki Murakami. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

You can read the whole speech here.