The Strange Library: Haruki Murakami

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Why did something like this have to happen to me? All I did was go to the library to borrow some books.’ The illustrations are beautiful, very varied, only loosely related to the text, and mostly copied from books in the ancient London Library ( http://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/). I recently attended a friend's birthday dinner there; it was a strange juxtaposition of enjoyments. However, it’s not that simple. There are also hallucinogenic suggestions and questions over narrator reliability. Is it magic or is it a dream? Either way, I don’t consider this story suitable for children. It’s about a child but it is undeniably dark and adult in its theme and complex in its construction and delivery. There's much more here than the surface suggests. The old man then leads him into a subterranean maze towards the reading room where he will be permitted to read the books. There the boy meets a sheep man who imprisons him in a cell. 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.

The Strange Library - Murakami, Haruki: 9780385354301 - AbeBooks The Strange Library - Murakami, Haruki: 9780385354301 - AbeBooks

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine 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, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. A pesar de todo, debo destacar que el mensaje principal del cuento es importante. Es un mensaje pesimista, aunque real en muchos casos, que nos hace reflexionar sobre la soledad e infelicidad de los niños que se sienten sin nadie con quien contar. El niño protagonista lee muchísimo, y aunque le gusta, es la clara muestra de que hay ocasiones donde sentimos tanto dolor en nuestro interior, que para protegernos, solemos buscar la manera de refugiarnos en alguna actividad que aleje temporalmente las preocupaciones de nuestra mente. En el caso del niño protagonista es la lectura, pero cuando nosotros nos sentimos mal, ¿en qué nos refugiamos? ¿En qué se refugiarán los niños que viven infelices y solos por el mundo? Naturalmente no nos deberíamos refugiar en ninguna parte sino resolver nuestros problemas, pero de ocurrir, en tal caso, la lectura siempre será una buena compañía en los momentos más difíciles. Siempre será preferible resguardarnos en la lectura, y no en actividades perversas como la violencia, las adicciones, etc.Das Blöde an einem Labyrinth ist, dass man erst am Ende weiß ob der Weg, für den man sich entschieden hat, richtig oder falsch war. Und wenn man am Ende merkt, dass man sich geirrt hat, ist es meistens zu spät. Das ist das Problem bei Labyrinthen.” US designer Chip Kidd, using more allusive, stark images, writes that: "To generate all the imagery, I borrowed from my own strange library of vintage Japanese graphics."

The Strange Library Quotes by Haruki Murakami - Goodreads The Strange Library Quotes by Haruki Murakami - Goodreads

If you are someone who has been waiting to start reading a book by Murakami but is perplexed by the sheer size of his works like 1Q84 and Killing Commendatore, this will be a good choice. Even though the writing and narration style is a little different compared to the usual style of Murakami, this will still be a good choice to start reading him if you don't like reading bigger books as it is comparatively smaller in size compared to his other works. The story is a fairly simple fable: a boy goes to the public library because he was idly wondering about the Ottoman tax collection system, and his mother always said, "If you don't know something, go to the library to look it up". He knows the place well, but on this occasion, he's sent to a reading room, via an enormous underground labyrinth, escorted by a sinister old man. It's not just the corridors that take a worrying turn, and he tries to quell his fears by rationalising the improbability of a public body being able to afford so much secret space. Is it magical, a hallucination, real in a parallel world? Will he live or die? Well, no time for delays. The Doctors are waiting". And she guided me down a set of corridors with carpeted walls in an avocado shade. At the end of one corridor were a pair of doors like those in a hospital. She pushed them open and guided me through. I have a confession to make ... The Strange Library is the first work of Haruki Murakami I've ever read. There, I’ve said it. One of my best friends, Srđan, kept pushing me to read something of Murakami's. To Srđan, Murakami is a mythic figure ~~ I'm certain he makes the sign of the cross every time the mere thought of Murakami enters his mind. Most of my friends love him as well. My mother has read nearly everything he has published. I'm awfully embarrassed to be so late jumping on the Murakami band wagon, but I'm glad I made the leap.

Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. His first job was at a record store, which is where one of his main characters, Toru Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, works. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the coffeehouse 'Peter Cat' which was a jazz bar in the evening in Kokubunji, Tokyo with his wife. The old man then leads him into a subterranean maze towards the reading room where he will be permitted to read the books. There the boy meets a sheep man who imprisons him in a cell. 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. [3]