21 Dec Strange and Stranger

Usually the publication of a new book by Haruki Murakami elicits all kinds of fanfares and enormous snaking queues that weave zealously round bookshops. (We can dream!) But this month’s publication of The Strange Library seems to have slipped a bit under the radar. First published in Japanese in 2008, it has a typically Murakami opening: a schoolboy pops into the library to find a book on taxation in the Ottoman empire – this is his first mistake. The quest for knowledge takes an unexpected turn …. And the short novel is more than a book in many ways. With its mysterious magenta cover and its library ticket holder on the front it makes you stop. It is an odd and beautiful thing – whose design and illustrations don’t just adorn but penetrates the story, melting into it with its dainty, surreal and haunting images that almost, at times, seem to finish Murakami’s sentences. The perfect gift.