A bestseller in Japan, Hika Harada’s DINNER AT THE NIGHT LIBRARY has been translated into English by Philip Gabriel and published by the Simon & Schuster imprint, Scribner.
I mention this matter of fact as DINNER AT THE NIGHT LIBRARY has the whiff of the pedantic in an unabashed love letter to libraries and literature, an almost fetishist fan tale, a fiction veiling fact.
It’s interesting that a book about a library and bibliophiles eschews chapters for the term episodes, five in all, the final running a third of the book. And each episode has a title alluding to a recipe, inspired by a mention in a novel or a biography.
But the library is no ordinary book depository, stocking volumes of deceased authors only, more a shrine, a memorial or museum than a lending library, where the staff bond over meals in the cafe and the owner casts a shadow of mystique over the operation.
There’s a certain inscrutability in DINNER AT THE NIGHT LIBRARY yet it still retains the power of any good book for the reader to get lost in, taken to a labyrinthine world, cast out of real life and entering into another.
The real joy of DINNER AT THE NIGHT LIBRARY is getting to know the characters who work there, burnt out booksellers and former librarians, mysteriously employed by an obscure vetting system.
As fascinating and intriguing as the idea of a musical based on the Dewey Decimal System, DINNER AT THE NIGHT LIBRARY is best read an episode at a time, after which you can retire to the kitchen and whip up a shirobanba curry, Mamaya’s carrot rice, Anne of Greengable’s bread and butter and cucumbers, Seiko Tanabe’s simmered sardines and okara, followed by Yoko Mori’s simple canned food recipes.
With DINNER AT THE NIGHT LIBRARY, it’s the morsels that make the meal.
DINNER AT THE NIGHT LIBRARY by HIKA HARADA translated by Philip Gabriel is published by Scribner.
