Winner of the 2021 International Prize for Arabic Fiction―known as the "Arabic Booker Prize"― this novel explores themes of loneliness, homelessness, and mental illness. After losing his job and house, a bookseller lives with the homeless in his city and assumes the identities of the heroes in the books he has read.After losing his job and refuge, Ibrahim al-Warraq, a bookseller, decides to live with the homeless people in his city and assuming the identities of the heroes of the novels he has read.Set between 1947 and 2019, this novel is based on several notebooks of stories about people facing different hardships, such as losing their homes or not knowing who their families are. Their interwoven destinies reveal the value of the house, as a symbol of one’s homeland, as opposed to the surrounding ruination. The central character is Ibrahim the bookseller, a cultured man, and voracious reader of novels who takes on the identity of the protagonists in novels which appeal to him. He beco
