大象传媒

Correspondents' tales of the libraries and literature which can change lives. In the rural schools of Kenya and Venezuela, the books don't arrive on a bus, but by mule and camel. In Uganda, schoolbooks might be rather more explicit about the dangers of HIV than outsiders expect. In one Kabul workshop, Afghan women find unexpected resonances with their own lives in prose and poetry from Northern Ireland. At a buzzing book fair in Hargeisa, Somaliland, organisers are amazed - and besieged - by public appetite for printed matter; in the famous Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Sons, the human drama isn't only on the shelves, but playing out among those who staff them. And on Morocco's Djema el Fnaa, the narratives have never been trapped between covers: instead, they live on in the memories of the square's famous storytellers.

Presenter: Pascale Harter
Producer: Arlene Gregorius