Book description
Yalo was a soldier on one of the many sides in Lebanon's sectarian
civil war, before becoming a deserter and a thief, a nightwatchman in
Paris, an arms smuggler, and then a rapist. And then he falls in love
with his victim - who turns him in to the police. This novel is a modern
Thousand and One Nights, a series of confessions extracted under
torture, a recitation of all of his memories, all his sorrows, all his
guilt - and of the other crimes his interrogators have him confess to.
Beirut and the legacy of the wars of the Middle East are the texture of
Elias Khoury's extraordinary literary achievement. Yalo was a soldier
on one of the many sides in Lebanon's sectarian civil war, before
becoming a deserter and a thief, a nightwatchman in Paris, an arms
smuggler, and then a rapist. And then he falls in love with his victim -
who turns him in to the police. This novel is a modern Thousand and One
Nights, a series of confessions extracted under torture, a recitation of
all of his memories, all his sorrows, all his guilt - and of the other
crimes his interrogators have him confess to. Beirut and the legacy of
the wars of the Middle East are the texture of Elias Khoury's
extraordinary literary achievement.
