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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > Yalo

Yalo

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 banned in Jordan and the gulf, ostensibly for its treatment of sex and religion, though probably for depicting Arab torture techniques, which Khoury researched. Khoury is quoted as saying that books are rarely banned in the Lebanon: “if they don’t like what you write, they don’t ban, they kill”.

Author

Elias Khoury

Elias Khoury

Books

Gate of the Sun

Yalo

Elias Khoury was born in Beirut 1948 and is one of the most distinguished writers and intellectuals in the contemporary Arab world. Khoury received degrees in History and Sociology. He founded several literary magazines and served as the cultural editor of the Beirut’s daily al-Safir. He is currently the editor of the weekly literary supplement of the newspaper al-Nahar. He has taught at the American University in Beirut, Columbia University, and New York University.

He is the author of eleven novels including Little Mountain, Gates of the City and The Journey of Little Gandhi, two plays (which have been performed in Beirut, Cairo, Paris, Vienna, and Basel), as well as several volumes of critical essays and short stories. Many of his works have been published in France with Actes Sud and Arlea, including La Porte du Soleil.

He was the artistic director of the Theatre of Beirut for six years and is now co-director of the Ayloul Theatre Festival in Beirut.  He is one of the 14 Arab intellectuals (including Edward Said and poets Mahmoud Darwish and Adonis) who signed a statement in protest of a neo-nazi conference that was to be held in Beirut.

Translator

Humphrey Davies

Humphrey Davies

Books

Gate of the Sun

The Yacoubian Building

Yalo

I Was Born There, I Was Born Here

Humphrey Davies holds a PhD in Near East Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. He has spent 36 years working and living in the Arab world – 20 of these in Egypt, with lengthy periods in Palestine, Sudan and Tunisia.  He works out of Arabic (both formal and four dialects: Egyptian Arabic, Sudanese, Tunisian and Palestinian).

His translations include Ala’ Al-Aswani’s The Yacoubian Building, Naguib Mahfouz’s Thebes at War and Sayed Ragab’s ‘El Far’ (‘Rat’) – a short story in Egyptian Arabic, published in Banipal Magazine (Summer 2002)

In addition to his translation work, he has worked for the Ford Foundation in Cairo and Khartoum; for the Save the Children Federation; and for Oxford University Press. He is based in Cairo.

Published by

MacLehose Press, 2009
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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 banned in Jordan and the gulf, ostensibly for its treatment of sex and religion, though probably for depicting Arab torture techniques, which Khoury researched. Khoury is quoted as saying that books are rarely banned in the Lebanon: “if they don’t like what you write, they don’t ban, they kill”.

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