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

<p><b>'</b><b><i>The Book Collectors of Daraya</i> celebrates the political and therapeutic power of the written word . . . defiant and cautiously optimistic' <i>Financial Times</i></b><br><br><b>'</b><b>[An] incredible chronicle . . . The book tells the kind of story that often gets buried beneath images of violence' <i>LitHub</i></b><br><br> In 2012 the rebel suburb of Daraya in Damascus was brutally besieged by Syrian government forces. Four years of suffering ensued, punctuated by shelling, barrel bombs and chemical gas attacks. People’s homes were destroyed and their food supplies cut off; disease was rife. <br><br> Yet in this man-made hell, forty young Syrian revolutionaries embarked on an extraordinary project, rescuing all the books they could find in the bombed-out ruins of their home town. They used them to create a secret librar