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It became the repository for Chimen's collection of thousands upon thousands of books, manuscripts and other printed, handwritten and painted documents, representing his journey through the great political, philosophical, religious and ethical debates that have shaped the western world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChimen Abramsky was barely a teenager when his father, a famous rabbi, was arrested by Stalin's secret police and sentenced to five years hard labour in Siberia, and fifteen when his family was exiled to London. Lacking a university degree, he nevertheless became a polymath, always obsessed with collecting ideas, with capturing the meanderings of the human soul through the world of great thoughts and thinkers. Rejecting his father's Orthodoxy, he became a Communist, made his living as a book-dealer and amassed a huge, and astonishingly rare, library of socialist literature and memorabilia. 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Room by room, book by book, idea by idea, the world of these politically engaged intellectuals, autodidacts and dreamers is lovingly resurrected.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this extraordinary elegy to a lost world, Sasha Abramsky's passionate narrative brings to life once more not just the Hillway salon, but the ideas, the conflicts, the personalities and the human yearnings that animated it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308291043701,"sku":"9781905559640","price":14.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781905559640_6358f483-53ee-42f9-b031-376013b1d6a2.jpg?v=1786029157"},{"product_id":"9781905559909","title":"The Brondesbury Tapestry","description":"\u003cp\u003eSix women and one man gather in a community centre in North London for a life writing class run by Dorothy, their uniquely unqualified teacher. 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