House of Letters is a vibrant reflection on literature and culture, books and writers, photography and time, loss and refuge, twilight and daylight… One of its first sentences says: “I, who had always thought of Paradise in form and image as a library.” It brings immediately the viewer in the realm of lost paradise. And the loss is indeed a major feeling that immerses us. Even without knowing the details of Manguel’s move out of France, we get an extremely strong feeling of fragility and threat. We get locked up in a poignant oxymoron between the power of the words and their elusiveness.
Image rights: Ali Kazma