Review: "The Man Who Read Books" by Rachid Benzine

The Man Who Read Books by Rachid Benzine
Translated from the French by Sam Taylor
Published November 2026 via Grand Central
★★★★

Gaza, circa 2014: A French photographer wanders the streets, looking for the photos of destruction that will satisfy his bosses and the human element that draws his own eye. That human element turns out to be a bookseller, a man who has built an oasis of words and stories. The price he asks for his photo is simple—to hear his story first.

You walk down the last stone steps, worn smooth by generations of Palestinian feet. Here their words were taken by the wind. Here they tasted their first kiss. Here they put the world to rights, as if hope could change anything. As if the world still cared about them. The streets here are full of life, but it's a life in parentheses, undermined by the fear that everything might collapse at the slightest tremor. (loc. 91*)

The Man Who Read Books is translated from the original French, which was published in 2025. (I note this largely because current political/war context in Gaza is so relevant, and because I didn't check that before reading, I did wonder for much of the book whether it had been written before or after 2023.) The German translation came out before the English, and I dithered, because I wanted to read it (and even in German it's short!), but I knew I would miss nuance in German, and this seemed like one where I'd like to catch the nuance. So lucky for me that this is seeing translation into so many languages, and English was quick to follow.

If you have not lived under a rock for the past few years, the contents of The Man Who Read Books will not surprise you.

We have been locked in this struggle for sixty-six years. It is all I have ever known, and there is no end in sight. We are ghosts, and every day we grow more obscure to others, and to ourselves. Soon we will be completely invisible, just as we have always been to the rest of the world. (loc. 969)

This is the story of one man, and his family and his community, living a life under siege; this is the story of one man who has never been allowed to claim his homeland as home. What interests me most, though, is the way the story is told: by a French-Moroccan writer, telling the story of a (white?) Francophone photographer who is in turn recounting the story told to him by a Palestinian bookseller. All these layers of perspective: who gets to tell the stories, and who gets to frame them, and who listens to stories told by which storytellers. And when the photographer leaves, or when he returns in a year or a decade...after all this, has the bookseller set out to achieve what he hoped, in keeping his shop open and in telling his story?

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.