A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War
Hardcover, 208 pages
Published Oct. 20, 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Follows the author as she connects with a group of young individuals as they establish a small, secret, underground library in Daraya that acts as a sanctuary against the horrors of war.
A very short, but powerful read on the beauty of language and books.
During the civil war in Syria, journalist Delphine Minoui sees a photo of Syrian rebels standing in front of a library of books. Intrigued, she hunts down the person who posted it on Facebook, and begins a series of calls and messages with a group of young Syrian rebels in the besieged city of Daraya. This book is the fairly short summary of what Minoui learned about the group, the war itself, and the general situation in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus, as told over a few years as she follows the struggles of the group. After the Arab Spring uprising, Bashar al-Assad's forces spent years trying to bomb the rebels into submission. In 2013, the young men in the photo discovered a ruined house with a trove of books, and decided to rescue them, eventually creating an underground library. Over the following years they filled the library with every …
During the civil war in Syria, journalist Delphine Minoui sees a photo of Syrian rebels standing in front of a library of books. Intrigued, she hunts down the person who posted it on Facebook, and begins a series of calls and messages with a group of young Syrian rebels in the besieged city of Daraya. This book is the fairly short summary of what Minoui learned about the group, the war itself, and the general situation in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus, as told over a few years as she follows the struggles of the group. After the Arab Spring uprising, Bashar al-Assad's forces spent years trying to bomb the rebels into submission. In 2013, the young men in the photo discovered a ruined house with a trove of books, and decided to rescue them, eventually creating an underground library. Over the following years they filled the library with every book they could find, all marked with the details of the original owner in hopes that one day the books could be returned again.
Although most of the young men hadn't been particularly interested in books before, they all discovered books were an escape and a refuge during the siege. The author describes some of the books that were unexpectedly most in demand - such as The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Alchemist, and The Little Prince - and how they changed people's lives and helped give them alternate ways of looking at the world and managing the situation until they were finally forced to leave Daraya in 2016.
It's fairly short and brief, but a very interesting view of the war from the inside.
