As Adimi’s story moves slowly toward Algerian independence, there is an ever-present beauty not only in Chris Andrew’s beautiful translation of her work from French to English, but in the seamless way that she weaves her story through time.

Arab News
Kaouther Adimi

Kaouther Adimi

Born in 1986 in Algiers, Kaouther Adimi lives in Paris. Our Riches, her third novel, though her first in English, 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.

cover image of the book Our Riches

Our Riches

by Kaouther Adimi

Translated by Chris Andrews

Our Riches 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.

More Information

As Adimi’s story moves slowly toward Algerian independence, there is an ever-present beauty not only in Chris Andrew’s beautiful translation of her work from French to English, but in the seamless way that she weaves her story through time.

Arab News

Our Riches reminds readers of the printed word’s ability to impart new ideas and shape public opinion.

Christian Science Monitor

This stirring novel, which was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt, is based on the life of Edmond Charlot, the publisher best known for discovering Albert Camus and for opening the famed bookstore Les Vraies Richesses in Algiers, in 1936.

The New Yorker

Thanks to France’s 132-year colonization of Algeria, the two countries are thoroughly intertwined — a relationship Adimi explores with nuance and determination in her third novel, Our Riches, newly translated by the excellent Chris Andrews.

Lily Meyer, NPR

An understated, lyrical story of reading and resistance over the tumultuous generations.

Kirkus Reviews (Starred)

Adimi’s confident prose displays Ryad and Charlot’s emotional depth while nimbly shuttling the reader through nearly a century of history. This is a moving tribute to the enduring power of literature.

Publishers Weekly

Fascinating: Adimi synthesizes the private minutiae of the great and sometimes forgotten publisher Edmond Charlot with the history of the times in a suprisingly light, almost breezy fashion, making this a fast, interesting, and engaging read.

Adam Hocker, Albertine Bookstore

A splendid declaration of the love of literature, the only link between epochs and beings.

Elle

A subject in gold: it was necessary to instill a rhythm, an experience, a tension, even to shake up the hourglass of time. Kaouther Adimi, born fifty years after the mythical bookshop, succeeds brilliantly at this triple jump.

Le Figaro

If you’re in a bookshop browsing, then Our Riches is for you, by definition. A beautiful little novel about books, history, ambition and the importance of literature to everyone, especially people who are trying to find a voice.

Nick Hornby
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