Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi (2020) (translated from the French by Chris Andrews)
The sign in the window at the legendary bookstore “Les Vrais Richesse” reads “One who reads is worth two who don’t”
In the city of Algiers in the 1930s, a young man dreams of a place where literature and those who create it can thrive. Edmond Charlot created a place that was part bookstore, part lending library, part publishing house, and part home for a generation of young writers. He said that it was to be a “space given over entirely to literature, art and friendship”. He called the store Les Vrais Richesse (True Wealth). There he and his friends would challenge the way books were published, and discover the genius of Albert Camus. The tiny store served as an intellectual center for the city through the years of World War II and into the post-war period. A terrible and violent time for France and Algeria.
Colonialism was well into its final death throes before the war, and it accelerated after it. Algeria was told that they were part of France, vital and beloved. But French actions spoke otherwise. There were massacres of Algerians in 1945 that hinted at the bloodshed to come. By the mid-1950s, there was an all out war between Algerian liberation forces and the French government. Both sides committed atrocities, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. A deep and painful history still connects the two nations.
It is against this background that we follow the stories of two men associated with the store. The first is Charlot himself. Adimi draws on the stories of people who knew him plus Charlot’s journals to create the idealism at the beginning of the journey, and all that followed. The friendships that underpinned everything he hoped to achieve. The hard times at the start, then the war. Charlot attempted to open a second branch of his publishing company, Editions Charlot, in Paris. It was there that the divide between France and her colony becomes clearer. His eventual return to Algiers and the beginning of the conflict.
The other story is of a young man, Ryad, hired to close the store down to be replaced with a beignet store. (The Charlot story is based on solid history, Ryad’s is, happily, fiction). Ryad has never heard of the store, Charlot, or any of the people intertwined in the history of the place where he works. In fact, the young man doesn’t like books much. The neighborhood greets him with a stony face, but he will discover many truths about himself and the people around him.
sIt would be easy for this book to be grim. This history it chronicles is violent, including more recent attacks on the people of Algeria by terrorists. The amazing thing is that Adimi creates a book of light and hope. Charlot believed in a community of creators. Writer, publisher, graphic artists, all working together to create great and beautiful books. His desperate search for any kind of paper to print on both during the war and his time in Paris. You can feel his disbelief that no one will help to assure the creation of the books. In the modern story, Ryad opens himself to the people and places around him.
As a book lover myself, I don’t think it is possible not to be won by Adimi’s wonderful work. At only 160 pages, “Our Riches” ends too soon. The Author knows exactly the spell she has woven, too. At the very end, Adimi speaks directly to the reader. The words are about the lure of discovering the place, to feel the history, and the weight of the words that grew there. The final chapter is meant more for Algerian and French readers than someone in the United States. But the final sentence sounded like a call to me, a yearning from deep in my heart that I’d never felt before.
“One day, you’ll come to 2b Rue Hamani, won’t you?”
Yes. I hope I will.
Rating – ***** Highest Recommendation
Stories Are My Life 
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