"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 Khouryis 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 Sunwas a New York TimesNotable Book of the Year in 2006.

Peter Therouxtranslated 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.

"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.)

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.

Elias 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.