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Summary
Summary
From internationally acclaimed author Haruki Murakami--a fantastical illustrated short novel about a boy imprisoned in a nightmarish library.
Opening the flaps on this unique little book, readers will find themselves immersed in the strange world of best-selling Haruki Murakami's wild imagination. The story of a lonely boy, a mysterious girl, and a tormented sheep man plotting their escape from a nightmarish library, the book is like nothing else Murakami has written. Designed by Chip Kidd and fully illustrated, in full color, throughout, this small format, 96 page volume is a treat for book lovers of all ages.
Author Notes
Haruki Murakami was born on January 12, 1949 in Kyoto, Japan and studied at Tokyo's Waseda University. He opened a coffeehouse/jazz bar in the capital called Peter Cat with his wife. He became a full-time author following the publication of his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, in 1979.
He writes both fiction and non-fiction works. His fiction works include Norwegian Wood, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, The Strange Library, and Men Without Women. Several of his stories have been adapted for the stage and as films. His nonfiction works include What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. He has received numerous literary awards including the Franz Kafka Prize for Kafka on the Shore, the Yomiuri Prize for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and the Jerusalem Prize. He has translated into Japanese literature written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Truman Capote, John Irving, and Paul Theroux.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this short, dreamy fable by Japanese fantasist Murakami, a young student describes his arrival at an odd Tokyo library. For no apparent reason, he is sent to the ancient, abrasive librarian, who leads him through an underground labyrinth of rooms and passages. On this curious journey the unnamed student is confronted by a man wearing a sheepskin, a large furious green-eyed dog, and a young woman who silently provides him with delicious, freshly baked doughnuts. Eventually he discovers the librarian's sinister, seemingly inescapable plan. The novella has its share of whimsy, which reader Heybourne conveys along with the student's youthful naïveté. Eventually this is replaced by a mood of confusion and anxiety, as the librarian croakily describes the protagonist's fate. This audio presentation perfectly captures the perplexing, nightmarish, and beguiling atmosphere of Murakami's fiction, but whether that is enough to compensate for the loss of the print edition's brilliant full-page designs by Chip Kidd is a decision the buyer will have to make. A Knopf hardcover. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Murakami's novels are odd, to be sure, but this short work, hot on the heels of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (2014), compresses those oddities into one macabre fairy tale-like story. A boy seeks out a book at the city library, only to be trapped there by a cruel old man and forced to read for days, stuffing knowledge into his brain, which the old man intends to slurp up. Whereas in longer Murakami novels, each strange scene is at least moored to some semblance of reality, this short work drifts apart, its eerie, dreamlike plot occurring completely within the walls of the labyrinthine prison beneath the library. Each object and character begins to take on a deeply symbolic quality, and, together with the intermittent full-page illustrations that merely suggest a connection to the story, the overall effect is unsettling yet captivating. This confounding work will probably not have as broad an appeal as his other novels, but fans of Murakami's weirdness, particularly his early books, will likely adore this distillation.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2014 Booklist
Kirkus Review
"I'm going to slice you up nice and fine and feed you to the centipedes." Another off-kilter yarn from master storyteller Murakami: allegorical, shadowy and not at all nice.Murakami (Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, 2014, etc.) loves two things among many: Franz Kafka (think Kafka on the Shore) and secret places (think 1Q84). This latest, brief and terse, combines those two passions in the frightening vision of a hapless young man who, returning two booksHow to Build a Submarine and Memoirs of a Shepherdto the library, is sent to Room 107, deep in a basement he didn't know existed. Confronted by an apparently friendly but nevertheless no-nonsense old man, the youngster allows that he's interested in "how taxes were collected in the Ottoman Empire." And who wouldn't be? Well, that's enough to send our young fellow into a nightmare world featuring a blandly mysterious young woman, a sheep man, the ever present threat of danger and the nagging worry that his mom is going to be upset when he doesn't show up for supper. Even so, our young man has the presence of mind to ask the right questions: How, given strapped municipal budgets and library cuts, could "our city library have such an enormous labyrinth in its basement?" And why is he being imprisonedfor the answer comes back positive to his question of the Sheep Man, "Is this by any chance a jail cell?" It would take a Terry Gilliam, or perhaps a Kurosawa, to film Murakami's nightmare properly, and if the reader may well be puzzled over what the story, published in Japan in 2005, means at heart, then the prospect of the young man's being freed only if he passes rigorous questioning over, yes, taxation in the Ottoman Empire will ignite the fear-of-a-long-ago-final-exam syndrome in all of us. At once beguiling and disquietingin short, trademark Murakamia fast read that sticks in the mind. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Starred Review. Debuting mere months after his latest instant best seller, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, this fable is a surprise addition to Murakami's addictive oeuvre. After returning his library books, a boy is sent to Room 107 in search of other titles. There he's trapped by a bald old librarian, guarded by a Sheep Man, fed by a voiceless girl, and forced to memorize "three fat books" about the Ottoman tax system for insidious purposes. How will the boy get home to his mother (and pet starling) in time for dinner? VERDICT This novel is just 96 pages, with 32 of those illustrations curated and created by designer Chip Kidd. The artwork is intriguing, mysterious, and untranslated (hints: that's "Meiji Milk Chocolate" in Chapter 13 and an upside-down labeled planet zoom-out in Chapter 17). New audiences could read this as just another provocative, surreal tale, but Murakami fans will obsessively catalog the many multilayered references to previous titles, from the obvious Sheep Man (Trilogy of the Rat), labyrinthine other worlds (Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World), silently communicative women (After Dark) to, of course, librarians (Kafka on the Shore), plus much more. A mesmerizing Strange Library indeed. [See Prepub Alert, 9/8/14.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
(1) The library was even more hushed than usual. My new leather shoes clacked against the gray linoleum. Their hard, dry sound was unlike my normal footsteps. Every time I get new shoes, it takes me a while to get used to their noise. A woman I'd never seen before was sitting at the circulation desk, reading a thick book. It was extraordinarily wide. She looked as if she were reading the right-hand page with her right eye, and the left-hand page with her left. "Excuse me," I said. She slammed the book down on her desk and peered up at me. "I came to return these," I said, placing the books I was carrying on the counter. One was titled How to Build a Submarine , the other Memoirs of a Shepherd . The librarian flipped their front covers back to check the due date. They weren't overdue. I'm always on time, and I never hand things in late. That's the way my mother taught me. Shepherds are the same. If they don't stick to their schedule, the sheep go completely bananas. The librarian stamped "Returned" on the card with a flourish and resumed her reading. "I'm looking for some books, too," I said. "Turn right at the bottom of the stairs," she replied without looking up. "Go straight down the corridor to Room 107." Excerpted from The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami, Ted Goossen All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.