What Can Literature Do in Times of War? – A Talk with author Rachid Benzine

Join French-Moroccan novelist and political scientist Rachid Benzine for a conversation on literature in times of crisis, on the occasion of the UK publication of his latest novel The Man Who Read Books.

Through this work, he invites us to consider how books can become acts of resistance, preserve individual stories, and help us make sense of a world marked by violence and loss.

His latest novel, L’homme qui lisait des livres (Julliard, 2025), follows an elderly bookseller in Gaza who turns to literature as the world around him collapses. Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Primo Levi, Franz Fanon and Mahmoud Darwish accompany him as he reads and remembers. The conversation will use the novel as a starting point to consider what literature can offer in moments of violence and upheaval.