
The Book Collectors
A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War
- 210 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
The Book Collectors
A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War
About this book
"An extraordinary story about the passion for books in war-torn Syria... Shelve this one next to Reading Lolita in Tehran. Heartbreaking, inspiring." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) A Best Book of the Year: NPR Outside of Damascus, Daraya is the very spot where the Syrian Civil War began. Since 2012, every single day, bombs fell on this place—a place of homes and families, schools and children, now emptied and broken into bits. And then a group searching for survivors stumbled upon a cache of books in the rubble. In a week, they had six thousand volumes; in a month, fifteen thousand. A sanctuary was born: a library where people could escape the blockade, a paper fortress to protect their humanity. The library offered a marvelous range of books—from Arabic poetry to American self-help, Shakespearean plays to stories of war in other times and places. The visitors shared photos and tales of their lives before the war, planned how to build a democracy, and tended the roots of their community despite shell-shocked soil. In the midst of the siege, the journalist Delphine Minoui tracked down one of the library's founders, twenty-three-year-old Ahmad. Over text messages, WhatsApp, and Facebook, Minoui came to know the young men who gathered in the library, exchanged ideas, learned English, and imagined how to shape the future, even as bombs kept falling from above. By telling their stories, Minoui makes a far-off, complicated war immediate and reveals these young men to be everyday heroes as inspiring as the books they read. The Book Collectors is a testament to their bravery and a celebration of the power of words.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Epigraph
- Map
- Prologue
- Begin Reading
- Epilogue
- Photographs
- The Book Collectors of Daraya
- Readers’ Favorites from the Library at Daraya
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- Also by Delphine Minoui
- Praise for The Book Collectors
- A Note About the Author and Translator
- Newsletter Sign-up
- Contents
- Copyright