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This title in other editionsOther titles in the Rainmaker Translations series:Yalo (Rainmaker Translations)by Elias Khoury
Review-A-Day"Khoury's great talent lies in his ability to let us witness the making of a monster, but without giving us the possibility of judging him or feeling morally superior to him." Laila Lalami, Los Angeles Times (read the entire Los Angeles Times review) "The fragments of the past never add up to a whole in Beirut. The city seems to communicate in images rather than in narrative, presenting a kaleidoscope of car bomb assassinations and refugee camps, Israeli warplanes and Hezbollah fighters, shards that whirl before our eyes without yielding much meaning....When a writer attempts, then, to make Beirut the source of his work, one can understand why the first principle of his aesthetic is that a fragmented city demands a fragmented novel." Siddhartha Deb, The Nation (read the entire Nation review) Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:“A heartbreaking book and sometimes hypnotic in beauty. . . . With both gentle and cruel images, Khoury wrote a lamentation for the generation that was corrupted and lost its children, and for the children themselves.”—Haaretz Elias Khoury’s most recent novel propels us into a fantastic universe of skewed reality that leaves us breathless to the last page. We follow the path of a young man, Yalo, who is growing up like a stray dog on the streets of Beirut during the long years of the Lebanese civil war. Living with his mother, who “lost her face in the mirror,” he falls in with a dangerous gang whose violent escapades he treats as a game. The game becomes a frightening reality, however, when Yalo is accused of rape and imprisoned. He is forced to confess to crimes of which he has no recollection. As he writes, and rewrites, he begins to grasp his family’s past and recall all that his psyche has buried, and the true Yalo begins to emerge. Elias Khoury is the author of twelve novels, four volumes of literary criticism, and three plays. Editor of the cultural pages of Beirut’s An-Nahar, Khoury also is a global distinguished professor at New York University. Gate of the Sun was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 2006. Peter Theroux translated Abdelrahman Munif's Cities of Salt, Naguib Mahfouz's Children of the Alley, and Alia Mamdouh’s Naphtalene: A Novel of Baghdad. He has lived and traveled throughout the Middle East and is currently based in Washington, DC. Review:"After the acclaimed Gate of the Sun, Khoury returns with the spellbinding 'confession' of Beirut criminal Daniel Jal'u, aka Yalo, who is picked up by the cops for rape, robbery and suspicion of arms smuggling. Under torture and the threat of more torture, Yalo writes numerous confessions, but seems unable to grasp the whole of his life, producing instead a series of conflicting sequences and inexplicable omissions. Brought up by his grandfather Ephraim, a half-mad Syriac priest, and his mother, Gaby, Yalo joins the army in 1979 and fights in the horrific Lebanese civil wars already under way. Deserting 10 years later, Yalo, after a series of adventures, ends up working as a guard for a rich lawyer whose villa is close to a wooded lovers lane; he progresses from voyeurism to robbing and, in some cases, rape. In so doing he meets Shirin, who will change his life — partially by turning him in. Khoury refuses to give the reader an easy position from which to judge Yalo — either as a poor soul or a serial rapist, criminal or victim of torture — or from which to judge Lebanon's tragic and violent fate. His novel is a dense and stunning work of art." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Synopsis:An adolescent on the streets awakens to his own history when he is forced to confess. Synopsis:Khourys novel follows the path of a young man, Yalo, who is growing up like a stray dog on the streets of Beirut. He is forced to confess to crimes of which he has no recollection. As he writes, he begins to grasp his familys past and recall all that his psyche has buried, until the true Yalo begins to emerge. About the AuthorElias Khoury is the editor of the literary supplement of al-Nahar newspaper in Beirut. He has taught at the American University of Beirut, Columbia University, and NYU. Picador will bring out GATE of the SUN in paperback this spring and Little Mountain, Gates of the City, and The Journey of Little Ghandi. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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