
This novel is just 96 pages, with 32 of those illustrations curated and created by designer Chip Kidd. The artwork is intriguing, mysterious, and untranslated (hints: that's "Meiji Milk Chocolate" in Chapter 13 and an upside-down labeled planet zoom-out in Chapter 17). New audiences could read this as just another provocative, surreal tale, but Murakami fans will obsessively catalog the many multilayered references to previous titles, from the obvious Sheep Man (
Trilogy of the Rat), labyrinthine other worlds (
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World), silently communicative women (
After Dark) to, of course, librarians (
Kafka on the Shore), plus much more. A mesmerizing
Strange Library indeed. [See Prepub Alert, 9/8/14.]