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1529012333

The book collectors of Daraya : a band of Syrian rebels, their underground library, and the stories that carried them through a war.

Author: Minoui, Delphine.

Author: Vergnaud, Lara.

Publication year: 2022

Language: English

Media class: Paperback

Classification: 956.91

Publisher: London : Picador, 2022.

ISBN: 9781529012330 (pbk.) : 9.99

Notes:

This translation originally published: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.

In 2012 the rebel suburb of Daraya in Damascus was brutally besieged by Syrian government forces. Four years of suffering ensued, punctuated by shelling, barrel bombs and chemical gas attacks. People's homes were destroyed and their food supplies cut off; disease was rife. Yet in this man-made hell, forty young Syrian revolutionaries embarked on an extraordinary project, rescuing all the books they could find in the bombed-out ruins of their home town. They used them to create a secret library, in a safe place, deep underground. It became their school, their university, their refuge. It was a place to learn, to exchange ideas, to dream and to hope.