Books Palace

Publisher: Dar Al-Mada Number of pages: 183 One can read a collection of books, or inherit a library and read its contents. As for reading an entire publishing house and some publications from other houses, this is only possible for someone who has lived nearly a century. The author of this book, Roger Grenier, was born in 1917 and passed away in 2017. He worked for more than half a century in management at one of the largest publishing houses in the world, the famous Gallimard. His book, "The Palace of Books," is the result of diverse readings accompanied by important notes on books that the publishing house asked him to express his opinion on, reflecting his stance on many literary, philosophical, and artistic issues, which he discusses in an engaging and enjoyable style. The Palace of Books reveals the author's keen insight, which takes the breadth of his knowledge, abundant information, ease of presentation, and pleasure in taking an enjoyable journey from Marcel Proust to Albert Camus, from Baudelaire to Virginia Woolf, from Boccaccio passing through Samuel Beckett and Maurice Blanchot, not forgetting Flaubert, Gilles Deleuze, George Sand, and dozens of others. Through them, we explore how to read books and why we read them. A delightful mix of autobiography, literary, and artistic criticism, in which the author tries to arouse our enthusiasm for books.