The book of all books
If you are an avid reader, if you are a book lover, if you are a recurrent visitor of libraries and bookshops, if you are a collector of rare books, or if you are a fan of the hilarious literary comic strips of @myjetpack , this book is for you and I cannot advise you enough to try to read it at least once.
“The City of Dreaming Books”. A wonderful, hilarious, fascinating, bizarre fantasy adventure created by famous German author and illustrator Walter Moers. I read it in French, but an English translation exists - and you, lucky English-speakers, can even read the sequel to this wonderful novel, “The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books”, which is currently unavailable to non-German speaking Frenchies like me. Of course, if you can read German, I also suggest you try to enjoy these marvelous tomes in their original language - but even if you do not understand the text the bizarre, crazy, demented but deeply charming and hypnotizing illustrations of Moers are enough to plunge you into a twisted, inventive, genius world of puns, obsessions, beauties and treacheries.
What is the story of “The City of Dreaming Books”? It is quite simple. They are the memoirs of an elderly lindworm scholar, Optimus Yarnspinner, retelling the greatest adventure he lived in his youth (I am using the English translations for the names - given everything is a pun in this world, the names change from language to language - in French it is Hildegunst Taillemythes, Hildegunst Myth-carver, and in German Hildegunst von Mythenmetz). As a young dinosaur-man of barely 77 years, Optimus is an avid bibliophile and aspiring author, who, on the death-bed of his mentor, inherits a manuscript. Not any manuscript: the manuscript of the best novel ever written in the history of the fantasy world of Zamonia. Reading this breaks you soul, makes you feel every emotions in the most intense way possible, and leaves you a forever changed being.
This discovery prompts Optimus to search for the mysterious author of this manuscript - a brilliant young man that was last seen decades and decades ago, trying to have his novel published, in a town called Bookholm, where Optimus goes to investigate. Begins a exploration and investigation tale in this grand city at the center of the book industry, a quest of unnerving discoveries, hilarious encounters, heart-breaking tragedies, goofy plot twists and sordid crimes, in the beating heart of the literary arts - in the City of Dreaming Books, where reading can kill, and authors can become gods... or devils.
The most intense pleasure brought by this novel is the universe of the titular City, the fabulous, fantastical, mind-blowing creation of Bookholm (Bouquinbourg in French, Buchhaim in German), a fantasy city that is all about books. Five hundred second hands bookshops, a million or so semi-legal book shops, with six hundred different publishing houses, fifty-five printing businesses and twelve paper factories. It is the city where all young authors go to get published, where all famous authors go to be recognized, praised and criticized, where all old authors go to die. All the books of history passed at one point by this wonderful city, where all the shops are centered around reading.
The opticians only give prescriptions for the best reading-glasses. All the alcohol and drugs sold are designe to enhance the reading experience. The pastries are shaped like books, the wood-carvers specialize in building bookshelves and book-holders, every pub has a public reading instead of an happy hour, and there are entire shops merely selling bookmarks. Linguists work in laboratories, dissecting words like animals, and book-binders are this city’s equivalent of trained surgeons. Scientists of Bookholm even go as far as to practice their psychological or biological projects in relation to literature - such as how one species’ literature was influenced by their biology, or the reverse. There are no big sports match - but rhyming competitions in literary salons. And the firemen are excepted to save the books first, the people afterward.
The other great charm of this novel being the whimsical, medieval bestiary-like, borderline-surrealist fantasy world it takes place in. Zamonia is a recurring setting of Moers, who wrote other fantasy books taking place in this “time of myths and legends” supposedly taking place millenias and millenias before the history of the world as we know it today - when there was more continents than today, and when mankind was but a planetary minority believed to be more legend than reality. In this book every character is unique, ranging from talking animals, humanoid reptiles, yetis and giant worms to extremely alien and cartoonesque species that could be coming out of a UFO. Being familiar with the Germanic European folklore can help, since many mythological and fairytale creatures can be found back in those pages (the very protagonist is a lindworm, and in other places German bogeymen such as the rye-wolves can be encountered). All of course, with the unique and strangely superb illustrations of Moers, of which I offer you a quick sample.
But let’s return to the books! Because this book is about books, all books, and literature, and book-selling, and the love and hate of books. Everything is described with such lavish details and such an imaginative mind - it is the most book-loving fantasy work I have ever read. And it is not without its dark side... Because in this world, there are demonology books, and cursed books, and trap-books designed to kill those that open them, and poisoned pages straight out of “The Name of the Rose”, and obscure literary-alchemists practicing strange editing experiences in the depths of the night, summoning golems of paper and demons of inks... And many of these forbidden and dangerous books are locked up in the catacombs below the city, a gigantic and ancient labyrinth that is regularly visited by the Book-Hunters, terrifying and deadly warriors trained to survive the treacherous paths and many deadly traps of the catacombs, so talented in their quest for books they can identify the nature of a tome merely by its smell.
Because the catacombs of Bookholm are filled with some of the most precious treasures one can imagine. Books of times so ancient they are forgotten ; first editions thought to be lost to the world ; manuscripts that never saw the printing press ; prints with typos so rare they become worth a lot of money... These are precious treasures for a city where dubious dwarfs sell the blood of authors under their coat, and where the finest and most renowned book-shops sell books the same way high-class, luxury-brand clothes sell their products.
And even beyond books, Moers keeps sliding here and there absolutely fantastic little stories, fleshing out the world - ghost legends and fairytales and imaginary geography - to keep us entertained while our sympathetic but also very unfit for adventure (he is a young author after all) has to make his way throughout scheming critics, bloodthirsty book-hunters, excentric dragon-witches, toasts of bees, haunted wines and criminal book-collectors.
And all that I describe... IS BUT THE FIRST PART OF THE BOOK!
I do not dare say more of it, out of fear of spoiling the surprise for you - but if you are a bibliophile, go check this beautiful novel. Let yourself sink in a world where books are law, justice, art, food, drugs and life, let yourself sink into a fantasy adventure with an ordinary bibliophile and aspiring author as a hero for once, and fall deep, deep into the depths of the labyrinthine catacombs of the books that dream but never die...
