Cognitive unreliability in the narrative of Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase

The study examines the narrative’s multifacetedness and how it represents the cognitive unreliability of the nameless narrator in Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase. Haruki Murakami, in his renowned Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, known as “Wall and Egg,” poignantly critiques the powerful political system of the world, linking it to a formidable stone wall, and representing individuals as fragile who inevitably collide with unyielding forces like corporate, governmental, and quasi-governmental organisations. This metaphor underscores the vulnerability of individuals in the face of oppressive societal structures.It is a novel which is fragmented with a first-person narrative, which constantly shifts from the present to the past. And later, it gets entwined with the history of sheep in Japan, and metaphysical elements. Cognitive unreliability is a blend ofnarrative unreliability and cognitive narratology of the narration. It focuses on cognitive dissonance, genre conflict, and intratextual conflict present in the narrative. It tries to further explore the perception, memory and emotion manifested within the narrative.The inconsistencyrepresented in the narrative shows the psychological distortion created by Murakami to dissonate the reality of the characters.