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The Broken Cedar
 
 

The Broken Cedar (Paperback)

by Martin Malone (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Scribner; New Ed edition (6 Oct 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0743231716
  • ISBN-13: 978-0743231718
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 973,990 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Review
Written by a former military policeman, and dealing with the effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Lebanese life, The Broken Cedar is nothing if not timely. Khalil, owner of a small electrical shop on the Israeli-Lebanon border for years, has managed to survive through tumultuous times. Now, with only a short time to live, it is time to face his life's reckoning. An unwilling accomplice to the lynching of two UN peacekeepers years before, he finds shadows of such old events rising up again with the sudden appearance of a victim's son. As he attempts to reconcile past actions with present consequences, Khalil's personal crisis of conscience can be also taken as a national one. The result is a novel with wider ramifications than just the personal drama it describes.

Martin Malone's earlier novels, After Kafra and Us, drew on his considerable experience of the conflict in the Middle East, and he returns to this familiar setting for his third work. Set amidst the turmoil of the Israel/Lebanon border, this powerful novel examines one man's personal crisis of conscience, and his need finally to come to terms with his actions many years previously. Khalil owns a small electrical shop in the Enclave, a buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon. He has done well for himself, supplying the needs of the UN soldiers as well as his own people, keeping his head down and earning enough money to build a beautiful house for himself and his wife, Zarifa. He employs a neighbour's little boy to help him in the shop, as a gesture of kindness towards the boy's mother who suffers at the hands of her abusive husband. Khalil is determined to ensure that Daoud receives an education and that his mother, Dahab, escapes from her husband to start a new life for herself and her son in another country. Yet beneath this philanthropic exterior, Khalil nurses a dreadful secret. As his life draws to a close and he increasingly feels the need to put his house in order, the burden of the past becomes almost unbearable. The arrival of young Jimmy O'Driscoll in search of his father's remains brings matters to a head. Khalil must confront the events of that terrible night many years ago, when he watched as two young men were attacked by a lynch mob. The victims were two UN peacekeepers, one of them O'Driscoll's father. As the novel unfolds we learn that Khalil, far from abetting the murder of both men, actually helped save O'Driscoll's life, spiriting him away to a home for the insane under the care of his brother-in-law. When Jimmy O'Driscoll returns to search for his father, Khalil is put in a dreadful position. Should he let the distraught young Irishman carry on believing that his father is dead, or should he break the vow of silence he made to the traumatised O'Driscoll years before? Malone's powerful, disturbing novel not only examines issues of guilt and divided loyalties, but also looks at personal conflicts within families, touching upon issues such as the controlling influence of men in Middle Eastern marriages, and the inferior position of women in many relationships. Although over 60, Khalil is a modern thinker - he regards his wife as an equal and has no truck with abusive, adulterous husbands, and his relationship with Zafira is still passionate, in spite of his illness. This is a profoundly moving novel, complex and full of fascinating insights into an area of the Middle Eastern conflict seldom addressed by other writers. (Kirkus UK) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Irish Examiner
‘Extraordinarily accomplished…beautifully realised' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars War: Ghosts and Realities, 15 Mar 2005
By Helena Mulkerns (Eritrea, Africa.) - See all my reviews
"The Broken Cedar" is a tough story, dealing with tough realities. It tells a grim tale, but along the way captures many memorable moments and events in the lives of its characters, and in the end, it leaves us intrigued and haunted by them. It's a ghost story - the tale of an elusive phantom, pursued by a passionate son in search of justice for a vanished father; it's a story of remorse - of a man whose life has been marred by a long-gone decision that still haunts him, even as he faces his own demise; it's a war story - the most savage kind, that individuals and families keep carefully under the carpet in any country torn by war, the most difficult kind to tell. In the telling of "The Broken Cedar", Martin Malone achieves a steady, engaging pace that draws us into Khalil's world, so that we see his everyday life and meet the people that matter most to him, from a neighbour's disturbed child that he has taken under his fatherly wing, to the impassioned young Irish soldier who shows up to challenge his integrity. The prose is successfully evocative of a life alien to most Europeans, and of a land that they often find perplexing. There are no political diatribes, but we are made aware of the conflict that has shaped Khalil by a masterful sublety that keeps the reader completely engrossed to the last page. Malone's former work as a peacekeeper shows only in the experience he clearly draws on to bring the book to life, but never imposes on the tale, nor his vivid characterisations. He brings us a page-turner that is intelligent and compassionate, that will entertain us as a good read should, but also leave us reflecting on the infinite capacity of the devastation of war.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Sex, Belief, Domestic Disputes, Shotguns, Rockets & Insights, 23 Feb 2005
By M. Halpin (Dublin Ireland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Broken Cedar (Hardcover)
Author Martin Malone was, until his recent retirement, a career soldier in Ireland's Defence Forces. In the last fifty years, Ireland's 10,000-strong army has taken part in many peacekeeping missions, from the Congo to Cyprus to Kosovo, Somalia and Iraq. Forty-six Irish peacekeepers have paid the ultimate price in southern Lebanon alone, serving the mission to bring resolution to conflicts they had no part creating.

"The Broken Cedar" is a novel that explores the tragedies and terrors that arise from this situation. The central character is a Lebanese Muslim named Khalil, haunted by the brutal lynching of an Irish peacekeeper. Years later, as terminal cancer is closing its grip on Khalil's body, the son- following in his father's honorable peacekeeping footsteps- comes knocking on Khalil's humble shop door, seeking answers. "Why?" [Khalil replies] "To drive through a village in morning for its dead- [escorting an American soldier,] the main ally of their sworn enemy! Ah, Sergeant, come now."

But war and politics are only part of the story. Khalil- and this novel is a character piece, above all- is not what Rush Limbaugh would lead one to expect. In 306 pages, Malone explores the point of view of a Muslim who is not a bloodthirsty extremist. Here comes the brutal human truth, from an author who spent five tours of duty among these people.

Lest anyone think that this is a "The Empty Cistern" of a book, allow me to abandon obscure Michener references long enough to reassure: Malone has written a mystery, one whose secrets are not revealed until the very last page. Sex. Death. Hash. Shotguns and rockets, domestic disputes, cash in hand and cheap electronics. Khalil twists, helping the Irish son locate his father's remains, without unearthing a past that is still uneasy in its grave. There's plenty to enjoy as well as much to consider. The book satisfies both the need to understand and the need to be entertained.

In 2004, "The Broken Cedar" was nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, a worldwide prize that carries 100,000 in booty. Fair play to Malone, one of only three Irish authors to be tapped! The winner will be announced in June 2005. Me, I've got my fingers crossed for this excellent novel.

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