Back home, he finds his mother waiting for him with a hot breakfast. The boy and sheep man manage to escape to the local park and as the boy rests sheep man disappears. With the help of sheep man and a mysterious voiceless girl, the boy makes a bid for freedom through the maze, but as they enter the library once more, they are confronted by the old man and a large black dog. He is told that he has one month to memorise all three volumes, after which the old man intends to eat his brains once they have become ‘nice and creamy’ with knowledge. There the boy meets a sheep man who imprisons him in a cell.

The old man then leads him into a subterranean maze towards the reading room where he will be permitted to read the books.

Fearful, the boy says he is interested in tax collection in the Ottoman Empire and the man goes to fetch three large volumes. When he asks to borrow a book, he is directed to Room 107 in the basement where a stern old man confronts him. Synopsis Ī boy visits his local library on the way home from school.

There are several picture books based on this short story, the most recent versions of which were published in 2014. The Strange Library (ふしぎな図書館 fushigi na toshokan) is a novella for children by Japanese author Haruki Murakami (村上春樹 Murakami Haruki). 'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.Showing three current editions of Haruki Murakami's story, The Strange Library: (L-R) Knopf, 2014 Harvill Secker, 2014 Kodansha Bunko, 2008 (2017 reprint). No one puts animal skins on humans like Murakami. This is vintage Murakami and, at the same time, something entirely fresh.

Maybe something about knowledge being free or the value of libraries. The Strange Library was designed and illustrated by famed book jacket designer (and frequent Murakami collaborator) Chip Kidd, whose moody and mysterious depictions of a child’s (and a parent’s) darkest dream match Murakami’s surreal imagination. There, we learn of the librarian’s ghoulish designs and the boy encounters a small man wearing the skin of a sheep and a pretty young girl pushing a teacart, their worlds now “all jumbled together.” Not even fresh-made doughnuts can sweeten the boy’s nightmarish predicament as the librarian’s prisoner. A little boy enters a quiet library - “even more hushed than usual,” we’re told in the opening line - and is sent to Room 107, where he meets a creepy old librarian who leads him deep into a maze of dark catacombs beneath the library. An Amazon Best Book of the Month, December 2014: What an odd and oddly beautiful little book.

Murakami the strange library