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.

Elias Khoury is the author of thirteen novels, four volumes of literary criticism and three plays. He was editor-in-chief of the cultural supplement of Beirut's daily newspaper, An-Nahar, and is Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University.