My biography through books

I heard recently by a fellow book lover that the books we read tell our story, and that in every book the reader finds a layer of him/her/themselves. We identify ourselves with the stories we read and project ourselves onto the characters.

As I love books, these sentences resonated with me and made me stop to think. Well, that the books we read tell our story, it sounds quite obvious according to me, as everything we do or that happens to us is a puzzle piece of our existence. Then I went on with my thinking, and saw it the other way round. I realised that we can go through our life through the books that stuck or left a mark. I decided to try to go through them. I have always read a lot, when I was a child, I was reading while having breakfast. I was reading during classes in high school. From my child, I remember Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain; I can’t say what appealed to me in the book to be honest. I was too young to reflect on racism, so I think it was the part on identity search and travel that talked to me. I remember trying to read The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, I was attracted by classics. I finished it despite not understanding a thing. I remember bringing it to school to show off. I recall Brave New World, the first book I ever read in English. This would have been enough to be part of my memories but I also enjoyed it a lot. I like imagining how our society could become in the future, how the power structure will be and social relationships will evolve. The family as we know it is a product of a socioeconomic structure, so it’s destined to change. I read The Lord of the Rings during the summer holidays. Long books never scared me, but I reckon back then I had more time to dedicate to reading. I remember reading A Suitable Boy, 1,488 pages, on the commute to work in Paris, which was one hour long. A long book for a long commute. I remember arriving in the office and putting it on the desk, and my boss commenting: “What are you reading, the dictionary?”.  

In my twenties, I read several books by Iranian female authors, as I grew curious about this side of my identity I knew so little about. My favourite will always be Reading Lolita in Teheran by Azar Nafisi. I deeply recommend it, especially to book lovers, as the author mixes the story of herself, of some women, of her country with analyses of books she teaches to her students. I went on reading books by second generation immigrants, such as The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi or Honour by Elif Shafak. As a second generation immigrant myself, I was curious to read what they had to say, how they found and defined their identity. I went through an identity crisis myself, even though it was never a source of suffering. I experienced racism as well, and curiously my experience was different from my sisters’. 

In more recent years, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie left a mark, and so did Blindness by Saramago, for the power of fiction to arouse emotions.

I can go on and on, I could write a book about this topic. I chose to write about it without thinking too much about it, I just wrote about the first books that came to my mind. I enjoyed the exercise, so if you feel nostalgic, don’t hesitate to share your story and favourite books of all times.