Library in a Battle Zone

The battle to keep some semblance of normalcy in a corner of the world gone mad is chronicled in the diary entries of the director of Iraq’s National Library and Archive in Baghdad, Saad Eskander.

Saad is struggling to keep the central library open and replace the rare books and documents that have been destroyed despite:

... bombings, blockades, shootings, threats, shortages and petty frustrations that make up everyday life.

The diary is now available online via the British Library website, reports Patricia Cohen in the New York Times. Here's just a few of the things he has had to contend with:

As he wrote in his latest entry, he was having trouble repairing the Internet system; the Restoration Laboratory “was hit by 5 bullets”; and “another librarian, who works at the Periodical Department, received a death threat. He has to leave his house and look for another one, as soon as he can; otherwise, he will be murdered.”

A single poignant story that represents the whole mess that is Iraq.

Update (10/6/08) :

I want to make the library a democratic model of how Iraq should be. From the start I hired Sunnis, Kurds, Shias, women, men. The national library must be a place - perhaps even the most important place - where Iraqis from many different groups come together." He claims to have paid special attention to women's rights.

Saad Eskanderhas more to say about running his library in heart-breaking timees in this interview by Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian.

Agoraphobia and the Author

Should an author stick to only what they know, choosing to write about only places they have travelled to? Mark Lawson takes up the debate in the Guardian in the wake of Stef Penney's Costa Book of the Year win for The Tenderness of Wolves.

Armando Ianucci, chairman of the judges descibes the book as:

... not just an extraordinary first novel but also an extraordinary novel ... It was a very ambitious undertaking ...

The novel is set in Canada, but the author has never been there - she suffered from agoraphobia and found it incredibly difficult even to take a London Bus to the British Library, let alone jump on an aeroplane. Here she talks about how she managed to overcome the crippling condition and why she shuns publicity.

And you can read an extract from her novel here.