The Book Collectors: A Band Of Syrian Rebels And The Stories That Carried Them Through A War

"The Book Collectors reminds us that heroes emerge in unpredictable places. Author Delphine Minoui, Middle East correspondent for Le Figaro, homes in on Daraya, a suburb of Damascus where the Syrian civil war began. Despite constant bombardment and near starvation, a small group of people manages to set up an underground library in Daraya. Within two months, the library houses 15,000 volumes collected from the rubble. It’s an oasis of calm and a gathering place for surviving neighbors to enjoy that lifesaving marker of civilization: reading."