5 of the Strangest Libraries in Fantasy

In addition to housing the sum of all knowledge, from the forbidden to the mundane, libraries are a ripe spot for plots: they can be secretive buildings with a selection of odd works, or grand edifices full of marble rotundas and hidden stacks. It’s no surprise, then, that fantasy fiction takes doubles down on the potential for weirdness within these hallowed repositories.
In honor of Scott Hawkins’s accomplished debut The Library at Mount Char, which features its own insane library, here are five of our favorite strange temples to the written word.

The Library of Babel (“The Library of Babel,” by Jorge Luis Borges)
Almost the ur-example, the library on which almost all other bizarre literary libraries are based, Borges’s short story describes an endless warren of hexagonal rooms whose books contain a random assortment of 25 characters (22 letters, a comma, a period, and a space.) Because the Library is either infinite or very close to it, there’s a chance that among all the gibberish exists every book that has or ever could be written in any possible universe. While the story doesn’t really venture too deep into the various denizens of the library, numerous writers have riffed on the idea of Borges’s infinite library, its boundless knowledge, bizarre cults, and eccentric librarians.

The Unseen University Library (Discworld, by Terry Pratchett)
While we’re on the subject of infinite knowledge, cults, and eccentric librarians, I’d have to turn in my credentials if I didn’t mention the Unseen University. A vast library filled with aggressive books and staffed by an orangutan who is very particular about his species classification (just ask anyone who mistakenly called him a monkey), the library at the largest wizards’ college on the Disc is a maze-like nightmare that only two entities have ever successfully navigated without help. Like the Library of Babelthat inspired it, the UU’s Library also boasts a book that very well could be God, the mighty Octavo, housing ancient spells that have existed since creation.

Bookholm (The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books, by Walter Moer)
Walter Moers’ Zamonia is a continent-wide setting where anything and everything can be deadly to its inhabitants, so why should its largest repository of books be any different? Bookholm, the bibliophile’s paradise from Moers’s Dreaming Books series (The City of Dreaming Books, The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books, and the forthcoming The Castle of Dreaming Books), is a massive city built upon books and full of dusty shelves teeming with long-forgotten tomes. If it’s been written in Zamonia, there’s a good chance Bookholm has a first edition you can check out…provided you’re willing to match wits with bloodthirsty book-hunting mercenaries, duplicitous literary agents, deadly predators that disguise themselves as books to hunt the unwary, and the darker things that lurk in the deep catacombs beneath the city.

The Strange Library, by Haruki Murakami
This library seems perfectly normal at its top floor, but if you know anything about Murakami, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn it houses a few hidden secrets. Head into the basement, and it becomes a nightmare staffed by a grotesque old man who imprisons patrons in an isolated room so he can eat their brains. The library only gets weirder from there: explore further and you’ll encounter enslaved sheep men, massive jars of hungry caterpillars, mysterious children, and books that suck you into their worlds to experience life as their characters. If it weren’t for that harsh warden, the imprisonment, and the impending threat of brain consumption, the dark labyrinth beneath the book’s unnamed city would actually be pretty cool. As it is, it’s probably better to read about thanvisit.

The Great Library, (The Thursday Next series, by Jasper Fforde)
Any series in which characters from across fiction exist in their own dimensions and can hop from book to book has to have a pretty kicking library, and BookWorld’s own Great Library delivers. It’s a 52-floor Grand Central station where characters from all over fiction rush to and fro, visiting their neighbors and commuting to work in all the numerous works of literature read in the human world. The Great Library is also home to the Well of Lost Plots, where books that are either in the process of being written or have been abandoned moulder away; and the Text Sea, where discarded books (and deceased characters) are reduced to their component text, which the various denizens of BookWorld trawl to find words to create new stories.
What fictional library would you most like to check out?