The House of Twenty Thousand Books

Sasha Abramsky

eBook - 2015

A KIRKUS “BEST NONFICTION BOOK” OF THE YEAR: A grandson’s “warmhearted, frank memoir” of family, literature, and Jewish history (Shelf Awareness).Fascinating stories and 43 photos paint a lively portrait of the remarkable Chimen Abramsky—collector of rare books and friend to the greatest 20th-century thinkers. The House of Twenty Thousand Books is the story of Chimen Abramsky, an extraordinary polymath and bibliophile who amassed a vast collection of socialist literature and Jewish history. For more than fifty years Chimen and his wife, Miriam, hosted epic gatherings in their house of books that brought together many of the age’s greatest thinkers.The atheist son of one of the century’s most important rabbis, Chimen was born... in 1916 near Minsk, spent his early teenage years in Moscow while his father served time in a Siberian labor camp for religious proselytizing, and... more