Jerusalem

A captivating journey through the hidden libraries of Jerusalem, where some of the worlds most enduring ideas were put into words In this enthralling book, Merav Mack and Benjamin Balint explore Jerusalems libraries to tell the story of this city as a place where some of the worlds most enduring ideas were put into words. The writers of Jerusalem, although renowned the world over, are not usually thought of as a distinct school; their stories as Jerusalemites have never before been woven into a single narrative. Nor have the stories of the custodians, past and present, who safeguard Jerusalems literary legacies. By showing how Jerusalem has been imagined by its writers and shelved by its librarians, Mack and Balint tell the untold history of how the peoples of the book have populated the city with texts. In their hands, Jerusalem itselfperched between East and West, antiquity and modernity, violence and pietycomes alive as a kind of labyrinthine library.