Death of a Library

Well done to Alana Mahon O'Neill from DCU Library, whose blog post received a special mention in the A&SL Blog Post Competition 2026.

The competition invited library staff and LIS students based in Ireland to submit a blog post exploring how library staff, libraries and information work are portrayed across film, television, literature, art, social media, gaming, news media or other cultural formats.

For millennia, libraries have existed as temples and intellectual retreats, preserving memories and wisdom for generations of learners. Yet, consistently, as this list of destroyed libraries shows, they have been destroyed.

This can stem from natural disasters such as fire and flood, or it can be the side effect of human activities, from wartime collateral damage to religious zealotry, or simply from neglect.

                        Figure 1: The fire of Alexandria, woodcuts by Hermann Göll, 1876. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

The Library of Alexandria is the most recognisable example; once the centre of knowledge in the ancient world, it was effectively written out of history by the 4th century as described in 'The Burning of the Library of Alexandria'. From time immemorial to our present day, cultures and intellectual freedom have been under attack, but destruction doesn’t always happen overnight. This history of book burning shows that they have been occurring since antiquity. Book burnings are strongly associated with early 20th-century Nazi Germany, which in turn sparked consistent copycat demonstrations. Books don’t even need to be burned; in 2024, a Florida College Library collection was tossed in the dump under the pretence of ‘weeding'.

A death starts small. Culturicide is the destruction of heritage, but the deliberate destruction of entire libraries is libricide. The death of a library is not just material loss, but a cultural and intellectual erasure. There is a proven history, and it is senseless to ignore the pattern.

Now that we have acknowledged this very real threat, I also wanted to ask: how have we depicted this phenomenon in fiction?

Fire is the main adversary of books; it destroyed The Great Library of Unseen University in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, The Baudelaire Library in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and The Great Jedi Library in Star Wars media. Meanwhile, the deliberate act of book burning is explored in speculative fiction such as Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, George Orwell’s 1984, and various historical WWII literature such as Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief.

However, while researching this trope of destroyed libraries, I have noted that the vast majority of fictional libraries actually seem to survive the story’s narrative. I imagine that this is because we as humans seek ultimate knowledge and are enchanted by the concept of a library that fulfils such desire. It is simply too terrible to imagine a world without libraries; in fact, a study by Duxfield et al. found that libraries in science fiction are optimistically depicted embedded into the fabric of society.

This may be why I found practically no resource or research into the trope of the destroyed library. It certainly exists in fiction, so why don’t we talk about it? The Duxfield et al. study references Griffen’s “The reinvented library” trope, library collections gathered post-catastrophe, as the most common type of library in science fiction. This identification feels like a post-death library, a reconstruction and preservation of knowledge when knowledge is scarce, but it does not identify the violence of the death itself.

Furthermore, I find that the destruction of a library in fiction feels like a quintessential exploration of the man versus God trope. In Missing Eco, Garret explores how literature like In the Name of the Rose approaches the library’s wisdom as a sort of holy temple, and therefore an affront on God. Meanwhile, Jorge Luis Borges’s The Library of Babel explores an infinite library of knowledge, driving its users to madness. Their labyrinthine allusions refer to the winding paths users take in the pursuit of knowledge, ultimately achieving catastrophe. So in many ways, the concept of the library is also like a modern tower of Babel, articulated by Garrett as "doomed to come crashing down".

I find that the death of a library provokes a profound sense of loss. It signals difficult times ahead, and in our writing, it can even foreshadow the death of everything.

I feel like I could finish my point here. However, after everything I have declared, it now feels too provocative to suggest that a library being destroyed in fiction can be a good thing.

How can violence be used to symbolise a retributive act of justice?

I would like to talk about the 2016 film The Handmaiden. Loosely based on the 2002 novel Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, director Park Chan-wook, in his film adaptation, shifts the setting from Victorian-era Britain to Japanese-occupied Korea.

The story follows pickpocket Sook-hee, who assumes a role as a handmaid to the heiress Hideko in a plot to steal her inheritance. Meek and unassuming Hideko lives a secluded life on a countryside estate in the custody of her eccentric uncle, Kouzuki.

Kouzuki possesses a rare collection of books in his personal library. He funded this obsession by assisting the Japanese takeover and was awarded a gold mine. Books for him are worth more than gold. As described in 'The Madhouse of the Handmaiden', this obsession means that his library becomes his holy temple, its contents his religion, and a snake guards the door, protecting its divine wisdom.

I will not spoil the entire film, but in order to express the significance of the following scene, I need to provide some context.

Despite Sook-hee’s plot to steal Hideko’s wealth, they unexpectedly fall in love. Sook-hee also learns that Hideko has been abused by her uncle, Kouzuki. The rare book collection in his library? All violent pornography. He abused his deceased wife by forcing her to read the material to men at book auctions, and now Hideko suffers the same fate.

Enraged, Sook-hee takes matters into her own hands.

The two women ravage the collection. Scrolls are ripped. Tapestries are torn. Cabinets upended. The music is tremendous. You feel uplifted in the carnage of red ink splattering water-laden pages.

Figure 2: The destroyed books are tossed in the water. Screenshot from The Handmaiden (2:12:23), directed by Park Chan-wook, 2016. Copyright Allstar/Amazon Studios 2016. 

The destruction of this library is two women regaining their agency from domineering, abusive men. Sook-hee destroys what was used to hurt and control Hideko in what is simultaneously a fit of rage but also an act of love. She becomes her saviour. The temple is desecrated, its holy scriptures annihilated, and the orchestra resounds in triumph. We cheer.

Finally, Sook-hee takes a metal switch, once a tool to abuse Hideko, to the crown of the library’s protector.

Figure 3: Sook-hee smashes the snake at the library entrance. Screenshot from The Handmaiden (2:12:46) directed by Park Chan-wook, 2016. Copyright Allstar/Amazon Studios 2016. 

“The snake marks the bounds of knowledge.”

This is the death of a library, but you will delight in the violence.