Stories that carried them through war

The Book Collectors Of Daraya: A Band of Syrian Rebels, Their Underground Library, and the Stories that Carried Them Through a War

DARAYA lies on the fringe of Damascus, just south-west of the Syrian capital. For years, the Middle Eastern country was gripped by a tragedy of massive proportion as war engulfed it, creating untold human suffering and hardship.

The rebel suburb of Daraya in Damascus was brutally besieged by the Syrian government’s forces in 2012. Four years of suffering ensued, punctuated by endless shelling, barrel bombs and the most indescribably inhumane chemical gas attacks. People’s homes were destroyed and their food supplies cut off; disease was rife.

In this beautifully written and heart-rendingly evoked book, Delphine Minoui describes how, in this man-made hell, 40 young Syrian revolutionaries embarked on an extraordinary project, going about rescuing all the books they could find in the bombed-out ruins.

Amid great danger and risks, they used them to create a secret library, in a safe place, a sanctuary, deep underground. This space became their school, their university and their refuge. A place to study, exchange ideas, dream and hope in the face of hopelessness amid the devastation on the ground above them.

Based on lengthy interviews with these young men, conducted over Skype by the award-winning French journalist Minoui, it is a powerful testament to freedom, tolerance and the power of literature.

This is not the first book about how a besieged town found hope: Mike Thomson’s Syria's Secret Library, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2019, offers a similar story.