The Media Library of the Instituto Francés in Madrid will be the stage this afternoon at 7 pm for the presentation of the book El librero de Gaza (The Gaza Bookseller), by Rachid Benzine. Free event with prior reservation. French and Spanish with simultaneous translation.
Of delicate and true writing, El librero de Gaza by Rachid Benzine (ed. Salamander) is a wise and moving fable that transports us to a corner of the world where books keep all that time and war have not been able to erase. In the presence of the author and in conversation with the journalist and head of culture of El Confidencial, Irene Hernández Velasco, the Instituto Francés invites you to discover “a passage of light to cross the gloom of the Palestinian tragedy” (France Culture).
In El librero de Gaza which has become an editorial phenomenon throughout Europe, novelist Rachid Benzine looks at human fragility and dignity head-on. His serene and luminous prose unfolds a story in which memory and hope are intertwined with the wounds of war and exile, sustained by the healing power of words.
Amid the smoky ruins of Gaza and the yellowish pages of books, old man Nabil waits. Perhaps someone will finally stop to listen. Because the specimens in his hands are not just objects: they are fragments of a life, scars of a people. When Julien Desmanges, a young French photographer, aims at this old man surrounded by books, he does not imagine that he is about to pass through the mirror. And so begins the Palestinian odyssey of a man who has chosen reading as refuge, resistance and homeland. From the exodus to prison, from commitment to political disillusionment, from seeing children grow up and live to the tragedies that take their loved ones, his voice guides the reader through the labyrinths of history and intimacy. And in a world where bombs try to have the last word, it reminds us that literature is our greatest chance of survival: not to escape from reality, but to fully inhabit it.
Rachid Benzine (Kenitra, Morocco, 1971) has lived in France since he was a child. He is a political scientist, novelist and playwright and has taught at various universities and institutions in France. He is the author, among others, of Thus Spoke My Mother, Before the Eyes of Heaven, Journey to the End of Childhood and The Bookseller in Gaza, chosen as one of the books of the 2025 Paris Book Market and currently being published in more than a dozen languages.