Syria's Secret Library
Reading and Redemption in a Town Under Siege
-
- $15.99
Publisher Description
The remarkable story of a small, makeshift library in the town of Daraya, and the people who found hope and humanity in its books during a four-year siege.
Daraya lies on the fringe of Damascus, just southwest of the Syrian capital. Yet for four years it lived in another world. Besieged by government forces early in the Syrian Civil War, its people were deprived of food, bombarded by heavy artillery, and under the constant fire of snipers. But deep beneath this scene of frightening devastation lay a hidden library. While the streets above echoed with shelling and rifle fire, the secret world below was a haven of books.
Long rows of well-thumbed volumes lined almost every wall: bloated editions with grand leather covers, pocket-sized guides to Syrian poetry, and no-nonsense reference books, all arranged in well-ordered lines. But this precious horde was not bought from publishers or loaned by other libraries--they were the books salvaged and scavenged at great personal risk from the doomed city above.
The story of this extraordinary place and the people who found purpose and refuge in it is one of hope, human resilience, and above all, the timeless, universal love of literature and the compassion and wisdom it fosters.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this compassionate account, journalist Thomson knits together and expands his reporting for the BBC on the underground library in the Syrian town of Darayya. He explains that the town, just outside of Damascus, was the location of some of the heaviest fighting of the Syrian civil war; its remaining inhabitants were forcibly relocated to refugee camps in the north of the country in 2016. But rather than give in to despair during the siege, the holdouts who remained undertook a remarkable initiative: to construct an underground library, with thousands of books salvaged from the rubble. In Thomson's telling, "this literary haven offered more than an escape from bombs and boredom. It was to become a portal to another world: one of learning, one of peace, and one of hope." While the book doesn't offer broader context on the Syrian conflict, Thomson succeeds in humanizing his subjects; the stories of such individuals as Amjad, a young boy who "managed to educate himself by reading all these books and taking on the responsibility of running the library," demonstrate the ability of the human spirit to persevere and find meaning in even the most inhumane conditions. The stories Thomson relates, of great courage and fortitude in the service of literature and education, will move readers.
