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Product Description
Book Description
From many true-life tales collected throughout Lebanon and its refugee camps over the course of seven years, Elias Khoury has created a monumental and spellbinding saga, putting human faces to a political tragedy at the forefront of the news even today.
Product Description
In a makeshift hospital in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut, Yunis, an aging Palestinian freedom fighter, lies in a coma. His spiritual son Dr Khaleel - who has no real medical qualifications - nurses the older man, refusing to admit that his hero may never regain consciousness.
In an attempt to revive his patient, Khaleel, like a modern-day Sheherazade, begins telling Yunis the stories of their people's exile in Lebanon. He evokes deserted peasant villages, the suffering caused by the Lebanese civil war and the refugees' hopes to return home with a subtle mixture of anger and compassion. Khaleel also narrates Yunis' own extraordinary life: his childhood in Palestine and his commitment as a member of the fedayeen.
Interweaving many true-life tales collected throughout Lebanon and its refugee camps over the course of seven years, Elias Khoury has created a monumental and spellbinding saga.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A powerful insight into the middle east, which is also a rich work of literature. By being both epic and personal, you are drawn into a terrible tragedy for a people and for people. A great hero lies in a coma and his story is told by his nurse, who is dedicated but has his own story to tell. It's a mixture of myth and ordinariness and is never simple.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The author smartly entwines all the true life stories he has come across in his lifetime into characters in his book. One of the main things I love is the way the author starts at the end of the story, and takes you back to the beginning, providing snippets of peoples distressed lives and then taking you back to how they have become that way.
For a true insight into the aftermath of the establishment of Israel and the lives of the dispersed Palestinians across the Arab nations (in particular Lebanon) then this is the book to read. The reference to Palestinians becoming the "Video Nation" is well put, attributing a nation living their daily lives based on the memory of what was once their heritage...
The book received a great review in the Guardian back in October 2005 which inspired me to buy it. Can't believe I'm the first to review it on Amazon though!
Note: Warning for the average modest reader! This book has a great deal of sexual content - far too graphical in some scenes. Hence the three stars.
For a true insight into the aftermath of the establishment of Israel and the lives of the dispersed Palestinians across the Arab nations (in particular Lebanon) then this is the book to read. The reference to Palestinians becoming the "Video Nation" is well put, attributing a nation living their daily lives based on the memory of what was once their heritage...
The book received a great review in the Guardian back in October 2005 which inspired me to buy it. Can't believe I'm the first to review it on Amazon though!
Note: Warning for the average modest reader! This book has a great deal of sexual content - far too graphical in some scenes. Hence the three stars.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you want to know something of the Palestinian story of the last 60 years then you could do a lot worse than read this. Khoury's 500 page epic takes the form of a monologue, as the scarcely trained Dr Khaleel Ayoub tries to talk comatose freedom fighter Yunis back to life.
The novel bulges with countless tales of flight, exile, persecution, descrimination and war but always allied to a deep love of the Palestinian land. What is perhaps surprising is that the novel is completely devoid of fundamentalism - Yunis is shown to have been as tolerant of atheists, spiritualists and Christians as he is of muslims. Time and time again, the Palestinians' devotion is shown to be to their historic land, their olive trees, "Christ's fish" from the sea at Galilee etc. Khoury's book revels in the themes of home v displacement, with refugees victims by dint of their status to a range of other horrors from hopelessness and poverty, to violence. This is a thought-provoking novel with much to add to the study of today's polarised Middle East.
My reservation is that this is a very dense tome. This is a 500 page monologue with precious few paragraph breaks, with overlapping, repeating stories told out of sequence and frequent asides into the imaginary with laments about the frailties of memory clouding accuracy. Thus, it is a challenging read and one that won't suit you if you like to dip into books or just read a few pages a day.
The novel bulges with countless tales of flight, exile, persecution, descrimination and war but always allied to a deep love of the Palestinian land. What is perhaps surprising is that the novel is completely devoid of fundamentalism - Yunis is shown to have been as tolerant of atheists, spiritualists and Christians as he is of muslims. Time and time again, the Palestinians' devotion is shown to be to their historic land, their olive trees, "Christ's fish" from the sea at Galilee etc. Khoury's book revels in the themes of home v displacement, with refugees victims by dint of their status to a range of other horrors from hopelessness and poverty, to violence. This is a thought-provoking novel with much to add to the study of today's polarised Middle East.
My reservation is that this is a very dense tome. This is a 500 page monologue with precious few paragraph breaks, with overlapping, repeating stories told out of sequence and frequent asides into the imaginary with laments about the frailties of memory clouding accuracy. Thus, it is a challenging read and one that won't suit you if you like to dip into books or just read a few pages a day.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
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I would have preferred to be given the chance to read a selection of pages from the book before I bought it. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Manal Nakli (Mrs)
If I could give it more stars, I would
When you're in the presence of literary greatness, you know it. This is one of the finest novels written in the 20th Century. Read more
Published on 13 Dec 2008 by The Bagster
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