Yalo Hardcover - 2007

Excerpt

Yalodidnotunderstandwhatwashappening.
The young man stood before the interrogator and closed his eyes. He always closed his eyes when he faced danger, when he was alone, and when his mother . . . On that day too, the morning of Thursday, December 22, 1993, he closed his eyes involuntarily.
Yalo did not understand why everything was white.
He saw the white interrogator, sitting behind a white table, the sun refracting on the glass window behind him, and his face bathed in reflected light. All Yalo saw were halos of light and a woman walking through the city streets, tripping on her shadow.
Yalo closed his eyes for a moment, or so he thought.

Media reviews

Elias Khoury’s Yalo is a novel that transcends—as only art can—the deep divisiveness of ideology, both political and religious. Yalo speaks to our universal humanity, to our profound longing for a realization of self and a connection to others. That such a vision should, at this moment in history, come to the American reading public from a great Arab novelist makes this an extraordinarily important publishing event. —Robert Olen Butler

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

How to write Beirut? . . . with words and images that stumble with weariness, that collapse from the heat, from the stone which composes them only to crumble in turn?...This is why Khoury’s fiction is so powerful. The intent of the writing is to restore its soul. —Tahar Ben Jelloun

Praise for Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun

A remarkable novel. —Harper’s Magazine

There has been powerful fiction about Palestinians . . . but few have held to the light the myths, tales and rumors of both Israel and the Arabs with such discerning compassion. In Humphrey Davies’ sparely poetic translation, Gate of the Sun is an imposingly rich and realistic novel, a genuine masterwork. —The New York Times Book Review