Author(s): Haruki Murakami

Novel | Japan | Graphic Novel | Translated fiction

'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 boy's brains. How will he escape?

Designed by Suzanne Dean.

A charming illustrated novella about a boy who walks into a library and finds himself in a terrible situation. Wonderfully designed, this book is beautiful: a small hardback with images throughout, laid out perfectly with gorgeous endpapers and compelling details on each page. Yet it is the text that will take you on the best journey. You will open the book and not close it until you reach the end, delving further into the strange library alongside the boy, hoping for an outcome that will deliver you both back to safety. This is Murakami through and through, with its labyrinth of winding passages for feet and mind, and characters who are part-human (the bird girl and the sheep man), its sparseness of text which is somehow expansive, and a sense of unease in which we can place our own fears and apprehensions. Above all it is charming.

{STELLA}

Review: The best novelist on the planet * Observer *
Murakami is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers . . . But while anyone can tell a story that resembles a dream, it's the rare artist, like this one, who can make us feel that we are dreaming it ourselves * New York Times Book Review *
A dark and memorable fairytale about the lingering influence of childhood fears and the isolation of adulthood -- Catherine Kelly * Cherwell Newspaper *
If you have an hour to spare one day and want a short, dark fantasy read, The Strange Library is the book to pick up * We Were Raised By Wolves *

Author Biography: In 1978, Haruki Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, which turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were translated into many languages, including English, and the door was thrown wide open to Murakami's unique and addictive fictional universe. Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of imaginative inquiry. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84 and Men Without Women, his distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring Murakami's place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.