The Book Smugglers of Daraya. A secret library in Syria.
Threshold| N° d'inventaire | 20973 |
| Format | |
| Détails | 160 p., paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2017 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | |
From 2012 to 2016, the rebel-held suburb of Daraya endured a relentless siege imposed by Damascus. Four years of descent into hell, punctuated by barrel bombings, chemical gas attacks, and submission through starvation. Faced with the violence of Bashar al-Assad's regime, some forty young Syrian revolutionaries took the unusual step of exhuming thousands of books buried beneath the ruins and gathering them in a clandestine library, hidden away in a city basement. Their resistance through books is an allegory: that of the absolute refusal of any form of political or religious domination. It embodies this third voice, between Damascus and Daesh, born from the peaceful demonstrations at the beginning of the 2011 anti-Assad uprising, which the war now threatens to stifle. This story, the result of a Skype correspondence between a French journalist and these rebellious activists, is a hymn to individual freedom, tolerance and the power of literature.
From 2012 to 2016, the rebel-held suburb of Daraya endured a relentless siege imposed by Damascus. Four years of descent into hell, punctuated by barrel bombings, chemical gas attacks, and submission through starvation. Faced with the violence of Bashar al-Assad's regime, some forty young Syrian revolutionaries took the unusual step of exhuming thousands of books buried beneath the ruins and gathering them in a clandestine library, hidden away in a city basement. Their resistance through books is an allegory: that of the absolute refusal of any form of political or religious domination. It embodies this third voice, between Damascus and Daesh, born from the peaceful demonstrations at the beginning of the 2011 anti-Assad uprising, which the war now threatens to stifle. This story, the result of a Skype correspondence between a French journalist and these rebellious activists, is a hymn to individual freedom, tolerance and the power of literature.