The Burning Library
Kerning Cultures
Kerning Cultures Network
4.9 • 529 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2022
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1962 the library at the University of Algiers was burned to the ground, turning hundreds of thousands of books to dust. But it was overshadowed by Algeria's independence from the French, and was largely forgotten. So one man has made it his mission to answer a simple question: are these books really gone? Or were they smuggled out by the extremists who set the library on fire in the first place?
Thank you to Samir Hachani and Bruno Boulanger for speaking to us for this episode. Thank you also to Dr. Andrew Bellisari, and Rayane from @ze.art.nerd.
This episode was produced by Zeina Dowidar and edited by Dana Ballout. Additional support from Alex Atack and Nadeen Shaker, fact checking by Deena Sabry, with sound design and mixing by Paul Alouf. Additional production support from Abdelraouf Meraga.
Support this podcast on patreon.com/kerningcultures for as little as $2 a month.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey guys, how about I take you to what I think is the prettiest library we have in Algeria? |
| 0:08.6 | If you're into books, art, history, libraries, you name it. You're going to love this episode. |
| 0:14.1 | It's in the library of the University of Algiers. Let's go. |
| 0:17.1 | The story starts in the heart of Algiers. You're hearing Rayan from the Instagram page at z.art. |
| 0:24.4 | He's a self-professed architect geek, |
| 0:26.6 | and today he's taking us on a tour of one of his favorite buildings, |
| 0:30.4 | the library of the University of Algiers. |
| 0:32.8 | It was actually built in 1888 by an architect called Louis Dauphin. |
| 0:39.3 | And it was built in the Beaux-Arts style. |
| 0:41.7 | It was much in the style of the buildings around it, |
| 0:43.9 | although it was much more beautiful back then. |
| 0:46.9 | The University of Algiers was the first modern university in Algeria. |
| 0:50.8 | When it first opened, almost all students were French settlers. |
| 0:54.6 | We asked Rayan to describe what the library would have looked like back then. |
| 0:57.7 | You see a lot of shelves decked in old books. |
| 1:02.7 | And trying to read the titles here, you would see that they are different topics from different |
| 1:09.3 | specialties. |
| 1:10.3 | And as I said, in 1888, it was not one university. |
| 1:14.6 | It was many faculties. |
| 1:15.8 | And then in 1909, it became one faculty. |
| 1:19.3 | And among the schools and the faculties were philosophy, medicine, math, biology. |
| 1:24.8 | And now they somehow all study in the same university, in this beautiful amalgam, |
... |
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