Notes on Fiction: The Strange Library

The Strange Library is a musical setting by Whitney George of the recent novella by Haruki Murakami. Designed and illustrated by famed book jacket designer (and frequent Murakami collaborator) Chip Kidd, the novella is packaged like a graphic novel, whose moody and mysterious depictions of a child’s darkest dream match Murakami’s surreal imagination.

The plot is equally eerie: 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. 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.

This evening's concert will consist of a complete reading of The Strange Library with projections of Kidd's colorful and disorienting illustrations, accompanied by live music composed by Whitney George and performed by The Curiosity Cabinet.