The dark library /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Libraries are magical places. But what if they're even more magical than we know?

In Cyrille Martinez's library, the books are alive: not just their ideas or their stories, but the books themselves. Meet the Angry Young Book, who has strong opinions about who reads what and why. He's tired of people reading bestsellers, so he places himself on the desks of those who might appreciate him. Meet the Old Historian who mysteriously vanished from the stacks. Meet the Blue Librarian, the Mauve Librarian, the Yellow Librarian, and spend a day with the Red Librarian trying to banish coffee cups and laptops.

Then one day there are no empty desks anywhere in the Great Library. A great horde of student workers has descended, and they will scan every single book in the library: the much-borrowed, the neglected, the popular, the obscure. What will happen to the library then? Will it still be necessary?

The Dark Library is a theoretical fiction, a meditation on what libraries mean in our digital world. Has the act of reading changed? What is a reader? A book? Martinez, a librarian himself, has written a love letter to the urban forest of the dark, wild library, where ideas and stories roam free.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

French writer and librarian Martinez (The Sleepworker) explores the purpose of libraries amid sweeping societal changes in this whimsical novel. An unnamed narrator visits his unnamed country's Great Library to find something new to read. Before arriving, the narrator explains the library's four towers: one for novels, one for sciences and humanities, one for rare items, and a fourth for "unclassifiables," the intention for which is "obscure... and their language bizarre." The narrator happens upon a title called the Angry Young Book, which literally begins speaking to him and tells a story about the Historian, one of the most dedicated literary minds in the country who donated his entire collection to the library, and then disappears. The Angry Young Book also shares its frustration over a general decline in readership and bemoans the gimmicky methods the library's management has been using to lure visitors. The dutiful, unnamed Red Librarian takes over the narration when a horde of "contractual readers" hired by the library appear and begin requesting titles at a breakneck pace as part of a secretive, and ultimately shocking, plan to save the library. Martinez tempers his satire with wit and quirky characters. This will delight fans of absurdist fiction. (Nov.)

Booklist Review

"Books change, libraries change, and there's no reason for the readers not to change". In his novella, novelist, poet, and librarian Martinez asks: as readers reach more frequently for digital formats, will libraries and physical books fall by the wayside? A Reader is on their way to the Great Library to find a book to read. They know that a book is waiting for them, but will they choose the book or will the book choose them? Upon arriving at the Great Library, an Angry Young Book makes themselves known to the Reader. Out flow many stories: of the books and their lives in the library; of the Red Librarian and how they saved the Old Historian; of the Reading Room where gradually reading ceases. When the Contractual Readers are brought in to digitize the collection, does this spell the end for the Great Library? A poignant and shrewd commentary on changing readership demands, The Dark Library also shows an appreciation for those readers, and the librarians who serve them, too.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Cyrille Martinez is a novelist and poet. He lives in Paris, where he is a librarian of French and comparative literature at the Sorbonne. He has published seven books, some of which have been adapted for theatre, and has done a number of readings in France and abroad. The Dark Library is his second book translated into English.Joseph Patrick Stancil has studied French and translation at UNC-Chapel Hill and New York University. He currently lives and works in New York City.