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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm.

You know, I've been trying to speak to my guest, Rabbi Al-Amadine, for around six years since I read his vast and wonderful novel,

The Haka Wadi.

Then I read an unnecessary woman, which just won the pre-feminina.

He's just returned from Paris Paris where he won this award.

And now he's written a book called The Angel of History.

In this book, the protagonist is Saul dead.

He's been living for years with the deaths of his friends due to the AIDS crisis.

And there are no longer people who remember how funny the friends were, how sexy the sex was, how incredible it was to build a community that was

literally pulled apart. The narrator, one might call it of the book, is a man who was a poet. He was born in Yemen. He lived in America. His mother was a

prostitute. She was in an Egyptian whorehouse. Brothel. Horthouse is the right word.

Well, someone said brothel, and I said, that's not right. Robbie says,

Horhouse, let's say Horhouse. Let's not leave these things to chance. And what is interesting

is that the book is simultaneously a sublime book and a dirty book. It mixes the facts of life with the soul

searching for the angelic. Therefore, the angelic, the angelic, the angel of history.

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