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3.5 

Our Riches

By Kaouther Adimi & Chris Andrews
Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi & Chris Andrews digital book - Fable

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Publisher Description

The powerful English debut of a rising young French star, Our Riches is a marvelous, surprising, hybrid novel about a beloved Algerian bookshop
A Library Journal Best Book of the Year
Finalist for the PEN Translation Prize
Winner of the French American Foundation Prize

Our Riches 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 (he was hopelessly generous) and the vicissitudes of wars and revolutions, Charlot (often compared to the legendary bookseller Sylvia Beach) carried forward Les Vraies Richesses as a cultural hub of Algiers.

Our Riches interweaves Charlot’s story with that of another twenty-year-old, Ryad (dispatched in 2017 to empty the old shop 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.

13 Reviews

3.5
“Kaouther Adimi’s Our Riches is unlike anything I have read recently. Translated from French, Adimi’s novel reads like the beautiful union of a love letter to publishing/book-selling, and the ripple effects of World War II and Algerian War on art and culture. Comprised of three interwoven narrative types (or chapters, maybe?), Our Riches tells two separate stories that, in reality, form one grand chronicle. The opening pages invite you into the beautifully realized Algiers, immediately establishing a captivating sense of place. Throughout the novel, similar chapters pull out from the two main stories, instead offering insights into historical episodes that better situate the underlying narrative within the turbulence of mid-20th century Algeria. The rest of the novel is told between Ryad’s story, and Edmond Charlot’s notebooks. Ryad, a young engineering student looking to complete hours school, is tasked with clearing out Les Vraies Richesses, the bookstore Edmond Charlot opened in Algiers in the early 1930s. Reading more like a conventional novel, the chapters with Ryad focus on his interactions with an old man (Abdallah) who is watching over the store. Abdallah (and others) do their best to convey to Ryad (who could care less about reading or the books in the store) the role the bookshop has played throughout the community’s history. When perspective shifts to Edmond Charlot’s notebooks, we get glimpses (in years-long chunks) into his life as a publisher and bookseller. These diary-like entries chronicle his journey through opening Les Vraies Richesses, to starting his publishing business (which included publishing Camus!), to opening a second store in Paris. We are afforded a first-hand account of the difficulties that war brought to his business (plans), and really the destruction it wrought to his overall desire to sell/publish good literature. Compelling, and at times feverish, these sections were some of my favorite. As I gently turned the last page of Our Riches, pulling myself out of a place that at once felt foreign, yet familiar, I found myself venturing down a rabbit hole of Algerian/French history, letting the rivers of the past continue my journey far beyond the book. If nothing else, I hope I have piqued your interest enough to check this book out – it publishes on April 28 (thank you so much New Directions Publishing for my free copy!).”

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