Bibliograph

Our riches, Kaouther Adimi ; translated from the French by Chris Andrews

Type

Label

Our riches, Kaouther Adimi ; translated from the French by Chris Andrews

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references

Index

no index present

Literary Form

fiction

Main title

Our riches

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

1102799221

Responsibility statement

Kaouther Adimi ; translated from the French by Chris Andrews

Series statement

New Directions paperbook, 1466

Summary

"Our Riches celebrates quixotic devotion and the love of books in the person of Edmond Charlot, who at the age of twenty founded Les Vraies Richesses (Our True Wealth), the famous Algerian bookstore/publishing house/lending library. He more than fulfilled its motto 'by the young, for the young', discovering the twenty-four-year-old Albert Camus in 1937. His entire archive was twice destroyed by the French colonial forces, but despite financial difficulties (he was hopelessly generous) and the vicissitudes of wars and revolutions, Charlot (often compared to the legendary bookseller Sylvia Beach) carried forward Les Vraies Richesses as a cultural hub of Algiers. Our Riches interweaves Charlot's story with that of another twenty-year-old, Ryad (dispatched in 2017 to empty the old shop and repaint it). Ryad's no booklover, but old Abdallah, the bookshop's self-appointed, nearly illiterate guardian, opens the young man's mind. Cutting brilliantly from Charlot to Ryad, from the 1930s to current times, from WWII to the bloody 1961 Free Algeria demonstrations in Paris, Adimi delicately packs a monumental history of intense political drama into her swift and poignant novel. But most of all, it's a hymn to the book and to the love of books."--, Provided by publisher

Classification