Novel
Little Mountain
الجبل الصغير
Elias Khoury · 1977
Synopsis
A nameless narrator remembers his childhood in the “little mountain”, the Christian quarter of East Beirut. A Christian himself, he has sided with the Palestinian fedayeen and their allies against the militias of his own camp. One day, five armed men get out of a jeep, search the family home, wreck it and insult his mother, who remains seated at the entrance; he was not there. The book then follows his fighting from 1975 in central Beirut and in the mountain, then his stay in Paris, where his wounds are treated.
Context
The book was published in 1977, in the midst of the civil war. It consists of five loosely connected chapters, in which the narrative proceeds by repetitions and episodes, without any chain of cause and effect, with a shifting point of view and an ironic tone. The French translation by Saadia Zaïm and Christian de Montella was published by Arléa in 1987 and reissued by Actes Sud in 2009; Maia Tabet translated it into English in 1989 for the University of Minnesota Press.
Who it is for
Neither a continuous plot nor a named hero: episodes that return and answer one another; it can be read in French as well as in English.
Prizes and reception
Its author's first book translated across the Atlantic, at the threshold of an oeuvre that includes fourteen novels.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.