I libri, l’esilio

Abstract

This essay discusses the role that books have had for the Jews living on the southern shore of the Mediterranean during colonial and postcolonial times, reconstructing some of the textual encounters that led me to conduct research on these issues. Books are considered as objects that talk about histories of belonging, exile and migration and that move from one place to another, pass from one person to another, and are lost and found again, objects for which we feel affection or that sometimes we want to give away. Mixing historical analysis with ego-historical reflections on my own research path, the essay looks at books as mirrors of the plurality of (Jewish) identities and memories that can be traced in the Mediterranean until the 1950s and 1960s and, in different ways, until today.

Keywords

• mediterranean
• books
• jewish history
• sephardi jews
• migration
• diaspora