Description

‘Please read this’ DAVID MITCHELL
‘Direct, beautiful, humane’ MADELEINE THIEN
‘A book to give, to share, to cherish’ LEILA SLIMANI
‘An essential novel’ DAVID DIOP

One morning, during a ceasefire in Gaza, a young photographer wanders far from his hotel and into the narrow alleys of the city. Roaming aimlessly, he stumbles across an old man, surrounded by stacks of books. As the photographer raises his camera, the bookseller asks him to listen to his story first. ‘For isn’t there a story behind every gaze? The story of a life. Sometimes of an entire nation.’

The story that unfolds encompasses exile and imprisonment, resistance and political disillusionment, the joy of watching your children grow up and the tragedies that tear your loved ones from you. They say that when an old man dies a library burns. Day after day, the photographer returns. Year after year, Nabil shares the books that helped him understand and, in some cases, survive these events – from the Palestinian poets Mahmoud Darwish and Mourid Barghouti to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Frantz Fanon and Ernest Hemingway.

The Man Who Read Books is a magnificent modern story of the power of words against barbarism, of books as bastions of resistance against the loss of empathy, of literature as a means of sustenance during our darkest hours.

Publisher Review

Whoever you are, whatever your politics, please read this -- DAVID MITCHELL The Man Who Read Books is direct, beautiful, humane. Such things, so fragile, are the thread we must hold. I hope that every person who has found shelter in reading, who has been saved by the words of another, will open this book -- MADELEINE THIEN Rarely has the power of fiction been expressed with such restraint and emotional force. Through the deeply moving story of Nabil, Benzine has written a novel in which literature is not a consolation but an act of resistance - against oblivion, hatred, and dehumanization. A book to give, to share and to cherish -- LEILA SLIMANI An essential novel to remind us that those in Gaza continue to read, they continue to exist -- DAVID DIOP Extraordinarily graceful . . . [Rachid Benzine] tells the story of a nation through one of its unlikeliest heroes, a bookshop keeper. A portrait of resilience, beauty and the loftiest reaches of the human soul -- HANNAH LILLITH ASSADI [Nabil's] tale is one of constant struggle; of finding love, education and great books; of building a family and a community under the pervasive threat of violence; and of succumbing to the temptation of violence and revenge himself. Through it all Julien and the reader find empathy and friendship. Beautifully translated, including a transcendent poem by Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti and invocations of classics, from The Little Prince to One Hundred Years of Solitude, Benzine's novel will be at home in every library * * Booklist * * 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 * * A novel that burns with relevance * * Dimanche * * A veritable literary phenomenon * * Le360 * *