The Bookseller's Notebooks

Jalal Barjas
Paperback, 328 pages
9781623718206

After losing his job and house, a bookseller live with the homeless in his city and assumes the identities of the heroes in the novels he has read. 

Set between 1947 and 2019, The Bookseller's Notebooks tells the story of Ibrahim, a bookseller and voracious reader, who loses his shop and finds himself on the street. Experiencing schizophrenia, he assumes the identities of the protagonists of the novels he loved, to commit a series of crimes of burglary, theft, and murder. He becomes a professional thief who robs banks and the very wealthy in order to help the abject poor and impose his own form of justice like Robin Hood. He attempts suicide before meeting a mysterious woman who will change his life.

This story and others are told through a series of notebooks and multiple narrators whose paths sometimes collide. It is the painful, fragmented tale of marginalised people who are ignored or invisible to others, while a corrupt ruling class thrives. Against this background, the importance of the house is highlighted, as a symbol of the homeland.

In intensely poetic language, Barjas audaciously tackles a difficult reality not just in Jordan but the world as a whole. He brilliantly uses all the tools of emotional stress and engagement and of psychological exploration of human behavior that narration necessitates.