The Strange Library

Title: The Strange Library

Author: Haruki Murakami

Publisher: Harvill Secker, London, 2014

78 pages

Brains packed with knowledge are yummy. They're nice and creamy. And sort of grainy at the same time.
--The Strange Library, Haruki Murakami

Welcome to Murakamiland, a dark-dreamlike story awaits you. The Strange Library is actually a bite-size book since it only consists of less than 100 pages. And for the first time we will enjoy Murakami's work with illustration. But, this is not a book for kid since the story still in Murakami's usual way. The story was written back in 1982 but just translated in English in 2014. This is one of my super quick reading since I finished it within a couple of hours. I was just too curious to put the book down.

The story starts with an unnamed schoolboy visits a city library to return two books and asks for reading a subject he says has just popped into his head: Tax Collection in the Ottoman Empire. A female librarian sends him to room 107 where another strange librarian hands him the requested book and conducts him to a secret space --'a creepy room', behind a locked door and down a hall to a labyrinth of corridors where a small man dressed in a sheepskin puts him a cell under lock and key. A very strange library indeed.

What will happen to the boy?  And how to refer the quote on yummy brain as I stated above with the boy's story? Tell you what, you're dying to know the ending of the story, aren't you? Therefore I said this is my super quick reading. An alternative book for a new Murakami's reader. Simple comparing to other Murakami's works yet fascinating.