The Library of Exile

A highlight of this year (so far) has been my visit to the artist and writer Edmund de Waal’s remarkable exhibit, The Library of Exile.

Housed within Venice’s grand, august Ateneo Veneto, de Waal curated a collection of volumes exclusively by exilic voices (by exiled authors and/or narratives of displacement). He implanted the library in a bright, white porcelain installation and encouraged visitors to sign Ex Libris bookplates. The pavilion is engraved with the names of lost libraries, including De Waal’s great-grandfather’s, as well as those of Sarajevo, Aleppo and Mosul. After travelling to the British Museum next March - please keep an eye out - it will move on to Mosul in Iraq.

More than 20,000 visitors went inside the library while stationed in Venice, since its opening during May.

I took great pleasure in autographing Lost In Translation by Eva Hoffman. Eva is a remarkable author and translator. Her first memories - as featured in that memoir - are extracted in my latest anthology, MY FIRST MEMORY, which explores the origin stories of great figures, including many refugee voices.

Eva was a Second World War child refugee and so had a baptism of hellfire: ‘In the beginning was the war,’ she wrote. ‘That was my theory of origins.’ Thankfully, Eva made it to safety, ultimately settling in New York. If only all child refugees today - and 50% of the world’s refugees are children - could experience the same safe passage toward a new homeland. Hoffman went on to observe of that route toward hopeful horizons, in a biblical rejoinder: ‘The sense of the future returns like a benediction, to balance the earlier annunciation of loss.’

The Library of Exile, a bright and hopeful chamber, reverberated with such voices. It provides a welcoming haven of benedictions.