The Man Who Read Books
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The Man Who Read Books
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Narrated by:
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By:
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Rachid Benzine
A young French photographer travels to Palestine to report on the bombings in the Gaza Strip. One morning, during a ceasefire, he wanders far from his hotel into the narrow alleys of the city. Roaming aimlessly, he stumbles across a bookseller sitting on the doorstop of his shop—an old man, surrounded by stacks of books. As the photographer raises his camera, the bookseller calls out to him and asks him to listen to his story, not simply take his picture.
The story that unfolds is one that encompasses exile and imprisonment, activism and political disillusionment, the joys of love and art and watching your children grow up and thrive, and the tragedies that tear your loved ones from you. Each event is tied to the book that helped him understand and, in some cases, survive it, from the Palestinian poets Mahmoud Darwish and Mourid Barghouti to Gabriel García Márquez, Frantz Fanon and Ernest Hemingway, among many others.
Rachid Benzine gives us a magnificent modern tale that explores the power of words against barbarism, of books as the last bastions of resistance against the loss of empathy, of literature as a means of sustenance during our darkest hours.
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Critic reviews
“An essential novel to remind us that those in Gaza continue to read, they continue to exist.” —David Diop, International Booker Prize-winning author of At Night All Blood Is Black and Beyond the Door of No Return
“Extraordinarily graceful and lightning swift. . . . Benzine, through his Palestinian character Nabil, has painted a portrait of resilience, beauty, and the loftiest reaches of the human soul.” —Hannah Lillith Assadi, author of Paradiso 17
“One of the most powerful novels of the literary season. It is not only a story about Palestine, it's a plea for humanity.” —Le Parisien
“An ode to reading . . . [in which] words snap like flashes.” —Télérama
“Deeply moving.” —Libération
“Of heartbreaking beauty.” —Madame Figaro
“A veritable literary phenomenon.” —Le360
“Extraordinarily graceful and lightning swift. . . . Benzine, through his Palestinian character Nabil, has painted a portrait of resilience, beauty, and the loftiest reaches of the human soul.” —Hannah Lillith Assadi, author of Paradiso 17
“One of the most powerful novels of the literary season. It is not only a story about Palestine, it's a plea for humanity.” —Le Parisien
“An ode to reading . . . [in which] words snap like flashes.” —Télérama
“Deeply moving.” —Libération
“Of heartbreaking beauty.” —Madame Figaro
“A veritable literary phenomenon.” —Le360
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