On a deep wound that requires ages to heal, the novelist, Kim Ecklin, presses to open a biography of genocide, and travels from the farthest west to the farthest east, to tell part of the tragedy of an Asian country, recording part of the testimonies of the living survivors, and those who wrote small signs, bearing two words. “We will not forget,” and they hung it on tree trunks, and it was also motivated by the story of a woman she met in the market of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, who lost all of her family members at that time, and when the Canadian author asked her: “Can I help?” What can I do? Her answer was: “Nothing, I just wanted you to know.”
During the unity between Syria and Egypt, the people of a small village in southern Syria submit a request to the region’s directorate about their desire to establish a public library. This request raises the astonishment of the authorities, as how can a village where most of its people have left due to drought, famine, and the approaching famine want paper instead of paper? the bread?!
With a circular narrative that begins with the submission of a purchase order and ends with the bookstore’s mysterious disappearance, the stories reproduce one after another, creating the novel’s grand narrative: the story of the desire for knowledge and imagination.
