Syria’s Secret Library: Reading and Redemption in a Town under Siege

In this compassionate account, journalist Thomson knits together and expands his reporting for the BBC on the underground library in the Syrian town of Darayya. He explains that the town, just outside of Damascus, was the location of some of the heaviest fighting of the Syrian civil war; its remaining inhabitants were forcibly relocated to refugee camps in the north of the country in 2016. But rather than give in to despair during the siege, the holdouts who remained undertook a remarkable initiative: to construct an underground library, with thousands of books salvaged from the rubble. In Thomson’s telling, “this literary haven offered more than an escape from bombs and boredom. It was to become a portal to another world: one of learning, one of peace, and one of hope.” While the book doesn’t offer broader context on the Syrian conflict, Thomson succeeds in humanizing his subjects; the stories of such individuals as Amjad, a young boy who “managed to educate himself by reading all these books and taking on the responsibility of running the library,” demonstrate the ability of the human spirit to persevere and find meaning in even the most inhumane conditions. The stories Thomson relates, of great courage and fortitude in the service of literature and education, will move readers. (July)