Novel
Dear Mr Kawabata
عزيزي السيد كواباتا
Rashid al-Daif · 1995
Synopsis
Rashid, a Maronite Christian born in 1945 who nearly died in a bomb explosion, writes a long letter to the Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata, dead for years. In it he recounts his childhood in a village ruled by vendetta, with an authoritarian father and an unhappy mother, his discovery at school that the Earth is round, his studies, then his Marxist commitment, from which his Christian identity ends up excluding him, against the backdrop of civil war.
Context
The novel was published in 1995 in Beirut by Mukhtarat, then reissued in 2001 by Riad El-Rayyes. It mixes autobiography, reportage, surreal elements, debates on language, humour and horror, in a narrative that does not follow chronological order. Yves Gonzalez-Quijano translated it into French as Cher Monsieur Kawabata, published by Sindbad in 1998, and Paul Starkey into English, for Quartet in 1999, with a preface by Margaret Drabble; there are also German and Polish translations.
Who it is for
To understand from the inside what the civil war did to the certainties of a Lebanese generation.
Prizes and reception
The book has been translated into eight European languages; in 1999, the review Banipal praised its blend of comedy and dread.