I tried to hack the mainframe and decode this book (ie: googling "ending explained") and I'm no closer than I was before I did this. But I think this is a gift, because it's too easy sometimes to just accept someone else's interpretation of what a book means, rather than thinking about it yourself and coming up with your own interpretation. I hesitated with this book for fear of being "wrong". But it's my interpretation, so buckle up and let's see what we can uncover together.

The MC goes to the library because he has an idea that just pops into his head one day: how did they collect taxes during the Ottoman empire? I loved this curiosity and inquisitiveness and the follow-through to actually go to the library and ask for materials to answer his burning question. However, we see his flaws, the guy is a total pushover. He's like 10, but still. He get shepherded through the library, in a totally passive way, into the basement where he's pushed into staying to read ('ok but just for 30 minutes'), into a jail cell with 3 books about his requested topic. He can go free when he memorizes the books. While in jail, he meets a few characters: the old man who is keeping him captive. We learn he likes to eat brains and they taste better when they're full of information. He also meets The Sheep Man, a man who wears a sheep outfit. The Sheep Man is kind of slow, but friendly enough, and very afraid of the old man. The old man threatens to submerge The Sheep Man in a jar of 10,000 caterpillars. ::Shudder:: The boy and the Sheep Man scheme on leaving the library. In the meantime, in his solitary confinement, he's visited by a very thin frail girl (paraphrasing here but 'her wrists were so delicate they seemed like they'd break') who speaks to him in telepathy and is very compassionate. The boy drifts in and out of reality and consciousness and we're not sure who to believe here. The Sheep Man says there's no girl he's ever seen, but then he later acknowledges her. The boy also disocciates(?) and his mind wanders to the point where he thinks he's one of the tax collectors of the Ottoman Empire, at home with his 3 wives, eating oranges. Woven through this current story, we learn the boy was bitten by a big black dog with a jeweled collar and this makes his mom overprotective and overly worried about him. He lives a gentle life with his mother and loves his bird, a starling. 

Eventually, on the new moon, the boy and The Sheep Man abscond through the labyrinth of the library and behind the last door is the old man, with a giant black dog. The black dog has a starling in his eyes, and the starling keeps growing until it's the size of a bull, and pins the old man against a wall. The Sheep Man and the boy escape and run to a park, where the boy falls asleep. When he wakes up, The Sheep Man is gone, and he's alone. We might think he made the whole thing up, but he lost his shoes in the basement of the library. He never wants to go back, or to talk to anyone about the incident, or to file a report against the old man. He goes home, and his bird is gone, and his mother doesn't even ask where he'd been for days. Finally, we get a post-script about his mom passing away of a mysterious illness. The end. 

Examining the facts: he should have stood up for himself and never gotten locked into the library. He gave the old man way too much respect and passivity for someone who didn't have his best interests at heart. Despite being in a harrowing situation, he found connection with the frail girl, The Sheep Man, and his hope for his bird. We think he actually experienced this because of his missing shoes. If none of this happened, where did his shoes go? And when he finally makes it home, his mom receives him blandly, then dies. The boy had a very active imagination -- he had a very realistic view into Ibn Armut Hasir's life, was he a spacy little kid imaginging all this, or did the library have some magical power that cast a spell on him to be able to vividly experience this? 

My lingering questions: I found this book on a list of ergodic literature and I feel like there should be meaning in the illustrations, like they reveal something. They do supplement the text, when they talk about the dog, they show pictures of a dog's eye. But there's no new arc that comes into focus when I think about all the images at the story's conclusion. 


For me, this was ok, nothing incredible. However, this is how I usually feel about Murakami (1Q84, Windup Bird Chronicles, Kafka on the Shore). They leave me confused without a clear ending but ambivalent. This book falls into the same bucket.