The Strange Library
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Fully illustrated and beautifully designed, this is a unique and wonderfully creepy tale that is sure to delight Murakami fans.
"All I did was go to the library to borrow some books."
On his way home from school, the young narrator of The Strange Library finds himself wondering how taxes were collected in the Ottoman Empire. He pops into the local library to see if it has a book on the subject. This is his first mistake.
Led to a special 'reading room' in a maze under the library by a strange old man, he finds himself imprisoned with only a sheep man, who makes excellent donuts, and a girl, who can talk with her hands, for company. His mother will be worrying why he hasn't returned in time for dinner and the old man seems to have an appetite for eating small boys' brains. How will he escape?
About this Author
HARUKI MURAKAMI was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honours is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J. M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera and V. S. Naipaul.
Reviews
"This Murakami could hardly get more Murakami." -Daniel Handler, The New York Times Book Review
"A fairy tale that reads at times like a grim blend of Kafka and Lewis Carroll, with a touch of whimsical erudition in the vein of The Phantom Tollbooth. . . . Around the corner of every frightening turn is something delightful." --The New Yorker
"[A] charming, surreal story. . . . Whether he is writing for adults or children, [Murakami] remains a suspenseful and fantastical storyteller." --The Washington Post
"An odd and beautiful thing. . . . It had me enthralled." --The Independent (UK)
"Japanese master Haruki Murakami's short fantasy tale The Strange Library . . . takes readers on a wondrous journey." --Elle
"Readers will get caught up in the world of the strange library . . . full of characters and images both awfully weird and utterly down to earth, transforms as you read it, becoming a living, nearly talismanic exercise in how to lift yourself out of the realm of the ordinary and allow the sentences to carry you into an alternate universe. The mysterious pleasure of it all is the payoff when you read Murakami. Some scholar may explain it to us all one day, diagram the roots of his work in the Japanese storytelling tradition, in fable and myth, the special effects he imports from American literature. For me, now, I'm just enjoying basking in the heat of this hypnotic short work." --NPR Books
"Like much of Murakami's work, it's simultaneously whimsical, meandering and sinister: a surrealistic tale . . . shot through with brutality, punishment and loss." --The Telegraph (UK)
"This dryly funny, concise fable features all the hallmarks of Murakami's deadpan magic, along with splashes of Lewis Carroll and the brothers Grimm." --Publishers Weekly
At once beguiling and disquieting--in short, trademark Murakami--a fast read that sticks in the mind." --Kirkus Reviews
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