The treasury: a novel of love and freedom, author: Ismat Mansour

This novel has a dominance over the reader, placing him between the walls of the known prison called the treasury for its strong fortifications, to live delicate and highly sensitive daily details with its characters those who spend their lives in the occupation's prisons, and the novel quotes their vivid images. I can also say that the appeal of the novel lies in the conflict of will, the war of minds between the prison and the guard, in transforming the ordinary and daily into tools that its heroes harness to surpass the prison's constraints and touch freedom, without the novel exaggerating in glorifying the experience, or heroizing its characters, but with a clever naturalness where simple events develop until they reach their peak in digging the tunnel to escape from the prison. By issuing it, Esmat Mansour places a fascinating literary work on the shelf of freedom literature, and presents a new text that rivals what the screen has offered from works like "Escape from Pretoria" and "The Shawshank Redemption" and other exciting cinematic works. Yes, this is a novel full of excitement in which Esmat Mansour utilizes his experience as a prisoner who spent about twenty years in detention, without the story being his personal tale taking the form of an autobiography. And the reader has the right to refuse to classify this novel as prison literature or as a love story, despite its events taking place inside the prison walls, and despite the facts of the hunger strike, and digging the tunnel to escape the prison, because the love story shines in the novel like a fleeting lightning bolt over the walls. Tariq Asraoui Number of pages: 168