| Record Number |
835446 |
| ISBN |
9781788164696 (hardback) |
| 1788164695 (hardback) |
| Author |
Adimi, Kaouther, 1986- author. |
| Title |
A bookshop in Algiers / Kaouther Adimi ; translated from the French by Chris Andrews. |
| Publisher/Date |
London : Serpent's Tail, 2020. |
| ©2020 |
| Pagination etc. |
146 pages ; 23 cm |
| Contents note |
First published in the United States of America in 2020 by New Directions as Our riches. Originally published in French as Nos richesses. |
| Bibliography, etc. note |
Includes bibliographical references. |
| Summary Note |
A Bookshop in Algiers 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 and the vicissitudes of wars and revolutions, Charlot carried forward Les Vraies Richesses as a cultural hub of Algiers. A Bookshop in Algiers interweaves Charlot's story with that of another twenty-year-old, Ryad, who is dispatched to the old shop in 2017 to empty it of books 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. |
| Language note |
Translated from the French. |
| Subject - Name |
Charlot, Edmond, -- 1915-2004 -- Fiction |
| Subject |
Publishers and publishing -- Algeria -- History -- Fiction |
| Booksellers and bookselling -- Algeria -- History -- Fiction |
| Algiers (Algeria) -- History -- 20th century -- Fiction |
| Biographical fiction. |
| Historical fiction. |
| Added Author |
Andrews, Chris, 1962- translator. |
| Added title |
Our riches. |
| Shelf Location |
F ADIM |
