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 boy’s brains. How will he escape?
The Strange Library is unconventional, brilliant, absurd and utterly Kafkaesque. There exists so much charm and quality with this short-story and the novel itself offers so much for the young reader, from an unpredictable and engaging story line, a carefully curated collaboration between the literal and the visual (the images are simply stunning!), and an exciting haptic experience.
