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Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi pdf download

Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi is a compelling, multi-layered novel that celebrates the power of books and the unyielding spirit of a beloved Algerian bookshop. Through the story of Edmond Charlot, who founded Les Vraies Richesses in 1937, the novel intertwines a rich history of passion, war, and revolution. Charlot’s devotion to literature, his discovery of Albert Camus, and his persistence against adversity are contrasted with the modern-day tale of Ryad, tasked with closing the iconic shop decades later. This poignant narrative explores the cultural and political struggles of Algeria, all while honoring the timeless love of books.

Summary of our riches by Kaouther Adimi

The powerful English debut of a rising young French star, Our Riches is a marvelous, surprising, hybrid novel about a beloved Algerian bookshop.  Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi  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.

About the author- Kaouther Adimi

Our riches by Kaouther Adimi
Kaouther Adimi

Born in 1986 in Algiers, Kaouther Adimi lives in Paris. Our Riches, her third novel, was shortlisted for the Goncourt and won the Prix Renaudot, the Prix du Style, the Prix Beur FM Méditerranée, and the Choix Goncourt de l’Italie. From the age of four to the age of eight, she lived with her family in Grenoble, France. During this period, she discovered the pleasure of reading, by going to the public library every week with her dad. In 1994, she returned to Algeria, which was then under the influence of terrorism. Having very few opportunities to read, she started to write her own stories.

While she was studying in the Algiers University, she entered a writing contest organized by the French Institute, for the young writers in Muret (Haute-Garonne). The short story she submitted held the attention of the jury who published it in a collection alongside the other laureates’ productions. Thanks to this contest, she was invited to Muret, then Toulouse, and finally Paris, where she met with les éditions Barzakh.

Information about the book (Amazon)

Our riches by Kaouther Adimi
Our riches by Kaouther Adimi

Excerpt from our riches by Kaouther Adimi

As soon as you arrive in Algiers, you will have to tackle thesteep streets, climb and then descend. You will come out onto Didouche Mourad — so many alleyways off to each side, like hundreds of intersecting stories — a few steps away from a bridge that is favored by suicides and lovers alike. Keep going down, away from the cafés and the bistros, the clothing stores, the produce markets, quick, keep going, don’t stop, turn left, smile at the old florist, lean for a few moments against a hundred-year-old palm tree, ignore the policeman who will tell you it’s prohibited, run after a goldfinch along with some kids, and come out onto Place Emir-Abdelkader. You might miss the Milk Bar: in full daylight the letters on the recently renovated façade are hard to make out. Their contours are blurred by the blinding sun and the almost-white blue of the sky. You will see children climbing onto the plinth of the statue of Emir Abdelkader, smiling broadly, posing for their parents, who will waste no time in posting the photos on social media. A man will be smoking and reading a newspaper in a doorway. You will have to greet him and exchange a few pleasantries before turning back, but not before glancing off to the side: the silver sea sparkling, the cries of the gulls, and always that blue, almost white. You will have to follow the channel of sky, forget the Haussmann-style buildings, and go past the Aéro- habitat, that block of cement looming over the city.

You will be alone; you have to be alone to get lost and see everything. There are some cities, and this is one, where any kind of company is a burden. You wander here as if among thoughts, hands in your pockets, a twinge in your heart. You will climb the streets, push open heavy wooden doors that are never locked, touch the marks left on the walls by bullets that cut down unionists, artists, soldiers, teachers, anonymous passers-by, and children. For centuries the sun has been rising over the terraces of Algiers, and for centuries, on those terraces, we have been killing each other. Take the time in the Casbah to sit down on a step. Listen to the young banjo players, imagine the old women behind closed shutters, watch the children having fun with a cat that’s lost its tail. And the blue overhead, and the blue at your feet: sky blue plunging into sea blue, a drop of oil dilating to infinity. The sea and sky that we no longer notice, in spite of the poets, trying to convince us that they are palettes of color, waiting to be adorned with pink or yellow or black. Forget that the roads are drenched with red, a red that has not been washed away, and every day our steps sink into it a little deeper. At dawn, before cars have invaded all the city’s thoroughfares, we can hear bombs exploding in the distance. But you will follow the alleys that lie open to the sun, won’t you? You’ll come at last to Rue Hamani, formerly known as Rue Charras. You’ll look for 2b: it won’t be easy, because some of the numbers have disappeared. You’ll stand there facing a sign in a window: One who reads is worth two who don’t. Facing History, with a capital H, which changed this world utterly, but also the small-h history of a man, Edmond Charlot, who, in 1936, at the age of twenty-one, opened a lending library called Les Vraies Richesses.

Where to buy our riches by Kaouther Adimi

You can buy this book which has won– A Library Journal Best Book of the Year
Finalist for the PEN Translation PrizeandWinner of the French American Foundation Prize from the following sites:

Barnesandnoble.com
Bookshop.com
Goodreads.com
Amazon.com

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