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Yalo

by

Translated from by

Published: January 2008 | Paperback September 22, 2015

Paperback ISBN: 9780914671282

Hardcover ISBN: 9780979333040

Ebook ISBN: 9781935744009

SKU: N/A Category: Tags: , ,
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See our bundle of all of Elias Khoury’s works in English. 

In Yalo, the reader is propelled into a fantastic universe of skewed reality and violent abandon. We follow the path of a young man, Yalo, who is growing up like a stray dog on the streets of Beirut during the long years of the Lebanese Civil War. Living with his mother who “lost her face in the mirror,” he falls in with a dangerous gang whose violent escapades he treats as a game. The game becomes a frightening reality, however, when Yalo is accused of rape and imprisoned. He is forced to confess to crimes of which he has no recollection. As he writes and rewrites his confession, he begins to grasp his family’s past, recalling all that his psyche has buried, and the true Yalo begins to emerge.

 

Yalo is available as an audiobook here.

Yalo is a novel that one would read over and over again. It holds so much meaning.”
—Tshepo Tshabalala, Tonight

 

Yalo may recount a Lebanon that is all too familiar for some readers – the deserted streets, uncertainty, paranoia and violence of a country at war with itself. Khoury’s book reminds us that tortured humanity can give rise to the diabolical and, as here, great art. ”
—Laura Wilkinson, The Daily Star

 

Yalo establishes Khoury as the sort of novelist whose name is inseparable from a city. Los Angeles has Joan Didion and Raymond Chandler, and Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk. The beautiful, resilient city of Beirut belongs to Khoury.”
—Laila Lalami, Los Angeles Times Book Review

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Praise

Yalo may recount a Lebanon that is all too familiar for some readers - the deserted streets, uncertainty, paranoia and violence of a country at war with itself. Khoury's book reminds us that tortured humanity can give rise to the diabolical and, as here, great art. 

Laura Wilkinson, The Daily Star

Elias Khoury’s Yalo is a novel that transcends—as only art can—the deep divisiveness of ideology, both political and religious. Yalo speaks to our universal humanity, to our profound longing for a realization of self and a connection to others. That such a vision should, at this moment in history, come to the American reading public from a great Arab novelist makes this an extraordinarily important publishing event.

Robert Olen Butler

Khoury refuses to give the reader an easy position from which to judge Yalo—either as a poor soul or a serial rapist, criminal or victim of torture—or from which to judge Lebanon’s tragic and violent fate. His novel is a dense and stunning work of art.

Publishers Weekly

Yalo establishes Khoury as the sort of novelist whose name is inseparable from a city. Los Angeles has Joan Didion and Raymond Chandler, and Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk. The beautiful, resilient city of Beirut belongs to Khoury.

Laila Lalami, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Great talent is rare and great realizations rarer. This novel has both...Yalo is a tremendous new book and I look forward to more Khoury/Theroux collaborations.

Jeff Waxman, Three Percent

Extras

Read Part One and Part Two of an overview of Elias Khoury’s writing and the process of literary translation.

 

Read about Elias Khoury’s relationship to his writing from a talk called “Translating Palestine.”

 

Watch and listen to a conversation with translator Humphrey Davies and André Naffis-Sahely.

 

Read an interview with Elias Khoury about the relationship between an author and his characters.

 

Read about Elias Khoury’s discussion of the Arab Spring from a child’s perspective.

 

Elias Khoury interviewed in Haaretz.

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