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Picture This: Memoirs of a Book Thief

IT IS Paris in the 1950s and semi-destitute university student Daniel Brodin, a self-styled poet, is being chased down the street by the owner of the legendary Minotaure bookshop.

Brodin had nicked a book and this time managed to escape by hiding in Cafe Serbier, a hotbed of literary confrontations where a poetry reading is on. Invited to chip in, he recites — as if it were his his own work — a poem from an Italian anthology of mad poets.

The gathering is stunned and the deception makes him a celebrity.

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