Over the past thirty-five years, Mahmoud Assaf has collected over thirty thousand books in his Gaza City home. Despite being displaced five times (from Gaza City to Khan Yunis to Rafah, and now to a tent in Deir al-Balah), the renowned Palestinian author manages to keep tabs on his collection, entrusted to the watchful care of neighbors.

With Assaf’s home still relatively untouched, in a city reduced to rubble, his library caught the eye of a local baker, who called its owner up with a chilling proposal. He proposed that Assaf sell the books — not so that people can read them, but to burn them. Fuel is in short supply, the baker said, and Assaf could help “feed his people.” But Assaf refused. “Turning knowledge into ashes for survival,” he said, “feels like dying.”

Assaf’s story is not just a parable of dignity amid destruction, it’s a window into what remains of a society under siege. It is one of many such stories chronicled in Jean-Pierre Filiu’s searing new eyewitness account, published in late May: Un Historien à Gaza (“A Historian in Gaza,” to be published in English in January 2026).