thejaymo

A mysterious narrator recounts an encounter with a tall Scottish Bible-seller, who shows him an ancient book, originally purchased from an Untouchable in India. The book, marked with the title “Holy Writ” and the word “Bombay,” is also known as “The Book of Sand”. 

The narrator exchanges a portion of his pension and some other valuables for the book. He conceals it on a bookshelf behind his copy of One Thousand and One Nights.

The book, written in an unfamiliar language and interspersed with illustrations, appears to be limitless, with new pages seemingly sprouting from the front and back covers as one reads.

Throughout the summer, the storyteller becomes fixated on the book, meticulously studying and cataloguing its illustrations, while avoiding the outdoors to prevent its potential theft. 

Slowly it dawns on him that the book’s title symbolises its infinite nature, its pages like endless grains of sand.

Eventually, he comes to terms with the book’s monstrous nature and contemplates incinerating it. But he fears the endless smoke from it multiplying pages might suffocate the world. Instead, he decides to abandon the book in the basement of the National Library, believing that “the best place to hide a leaf is in a forest.”

The world of the Library is depicted as a vast series of connected hexagonal rooms. Each room features an entrance, basic human necessities, and bookshelves occupying four walls. 

The books on the shelves are arranged randomly, without logic or reason. The contents of all the books in all the rooms encompass every possible combination of 25 fundamental characters. 22 letters, a period, a comma, and a space. As a result, most of the books are nonsensical.

The library contains every conceivable book. Including all existing and potential future works, along with variations and errors. The narrator’s logic follows that it must also contain valuable information, such as future predictions, and biographies of everyone who has and has yet to lived. However, they also imply that as any text can be interpreted in countless ways, all the infinite texts also have infinite meanings.

Despite or perhaps because of the abundance of information, all the books are meaningless. Plunging the librarians into a state of despair – often leading to suicidal thoughts. 

This overwhelming situation also gives rise to peculiar behaviours or classes of librarians. Some, known as “Purifiers,” destroy books they consider nonsensical. Others search for the “Crimson Hexagon” and its mythical illustrated books. Others still hold the belief that among the infinite books, there must be one that perfectly indexes the library’s contents. Some even believe in a messianic figure, the “Man of the Book,” who has supposedly read the perfect index, and wander the library in search of him.