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Product Description
Product Description
After 17 years, the narrator and his friend, Ali, meet at Heathrow and slowly remember their past in Lebanon. Their memories are concentrated on one fatal night when they were with two other friends for the last time, before tragedy struck. But for the narrator, a personal tragedy had occurred much earlier... Both the narrator and Ali are Palestinians born in Lebanon. Like many others, they had to leave in the mid-1980s, when it became a battleground for local armies - Ali to America, the narrator to London. But this is not just a story about suffering, it is also about absurd politics and violence - about a world where tragedy and comedy co-exist. A poignant story that lingers long after one has finished it.
About the Author
Samir El-Youssef is Palestinian and was born in Rashidia, a refugee camp in Lebanon. His essays and reviews have appeared in Guardian, New Statesman, Washington Post, Jewish Quarterly as well as the Arabic Al-Hayat. He has been living in North London since 1990. In 2005 he won the Tucholsky Award for promoting the cause of peace and freedom of speech in the Middle East. The Illusion of Return is his first novel in English.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover
Intimate and touching, El-Youseff's book is about a Palestinian emigre in London looking back on an intense period of his life in Lebanon where he grew up. A brief Heathrow rendez-vous with an old friend, now 'exiled' as a 'collaborator' in the USA, is the book's fulcrum as the narrator recounts how the events transpired leading up to a final night of four friends together for a last time before the dramatic circumstances of 1980s Lebanon catch up with them all.
As the story unfolds it becomes clear that the narrator has kept a family secret from the world all these years. The situation of the Palestinian refugees is the backdrop to an expose of the hypocrisy encountered behind 'the movement'-led resistance. The illusion of return in the title is the realisation the author comes to that there is no chance of any return but a symbolic one. For him, when a people has nothing to dream of or aspire to it will resort to a collective living in the past, as if that memory will succour them indefinitely. Sensitively written, this book is an interesting and original approach to the subject.
As the story unfolds it becomes clear that the narrator has kept a family secret from the world all these years. The situation of the Palestinian refugees is the backdrop to an expose of the hypocrisy encountered behind 'the movement'-led resistance. The illusion of return in the title is the realisation the author comes to that there is no chance of any return but a symbolic one. For him, when a people has nothing to dream of or aspire to it will resort to a collective living in the past, as if that memory will succour them indefinitely. Sensitively written, this book is an interesting and original approach to the subject.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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2 reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Conversations in a city under siege . . .
23 Jan 2010
Format:Paperback
This 150-page novella could well be transposed into a stageplay, for the action is limited chiefly to a small cast of characters sitting together in a cafe and talking. They have ideas and stories to tell, there is conflict between them, and the revelations are paced in much the same way as a drama in which we gradually come to know the crisis points in each of their lives. Set in Beirut during the occupation of Lebanon by the Israelis in the 1980s, the novel is a blend of politics and the personal, remembered in flashback by the narrator years later and in another city and another country.
The narrative captures something of the anxiety felt among people living in a city under siege - where there is a high-risk mix of informers, collaborators, an occupying army, resistance fighters, and militias. It also captures nicely how people's daily lives and their relationships with one another carry on - for better or worse - despite these surroundings.
Three lives are lost during the telling of the story, all casualties of political differences resulting from the collision of two people's "right of return" - the Israelis and the displaced Palestinians. For the narrator, now living in London, there is something of a resolution of his mixed feelings about the past in a story relayed to him from a Polish Jew by a friend now living in America - as they meet to talk once more, this time in a cafe at Heathrow Airport. The book takes a little patience, as it unfolds rather slowly, but the ending is worth the wait.
The narrative captures something of the anxiety felt among people living in a city under siege - where there is a high-risk mix of informers, collaborators, an occupying army, resistance fighters, and militias. It also captures nicely how people's daily lives and their relationships with one another carry on - for better or worse - despite these surroundings.
Three lives are lost during the telling of the story, all casualties of political differences resulting from the collision of two people's "right of return" - the Israelis and the displaced Palestinians. For the narrator, now living in London, there is something of a resolution of his mixed feelings about the past in a story relayed to him from a Polish Jew by a friend now living in America - as they meet to talk once more, this time in a cafe at Heathrow Airport. The book takes a little patience, as it unfolds rather slowly, but the ending is worth the wait.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A rich novella of exile and isolation
6 Jan 2009
Format:Paperback
The narrator of this novella is a Palestinian who emigrated from war stricken 1980s Lebanon to London, who receives a phone call from a long lost friend who has also emigrated, to the United States, and wishes to meet with him during a layover at Heathrow Airport on his way back to Lebanon. They haven't spoken to each other or returned to Lebanon after a tragic day that deeply affected both men and their families.
The book's title refers not only to the narrator's belief that it is an illusion that Palestinians can return to their former homes, but also to the impossibility of accurately reexamining memories of the past. It is very well written, and the author, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, gives us a vivid portrayal of the complexity of life in wartime Lebanon, and the pain and isolation that is a daily experience of its exiles.
The book's title refers not only to the narrator's belief that it is an illusion that Palestinians can return to their former homes, but also to the impossibility of accurately reexamining memories of the past. It is very well written, and the author, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, gives us a vivid portrayal of the complexity of life in wartime Lebanon, and the pain and isolation that is a daily experience of its exiles.
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