I cannot believe I am still reading this book! (Nearly a month later).
It churns and churns, repeating itself endlessly, maybe adding a little more detail with each telling.
And the torture, I hate reading about torture; maybe I have my head in the sand but it distresses me that people can be so cruel to each other.
Mind you, the main character isn't much better, he may be a product of the Lebanese Civil War, but he's a nasty piece of work too - a rapist who doesn't even realise that what he's doing is rape.

What I'm finding truly fascinating is that, by chance, I have two different translations and I keep swapping between the two. Humphrey Davis's version is very much more poetic, it has more of an Arabic feel to it, while Peter Theroux seems to write for a more Western audience, less flowery but sometimes too direct. I'd struggle to say which version I prefer and I'm definitely spending too much time comparing them.

Just under 100 pages to go and I guess I'm going to struggle through to the end now. The book group has been and gone, so I'm just doing this for myself(?!). I need to know how Yalo will end up, though I can't say I really care if he meets a grisly end.......

16th December and I finally finished. It didn't get any better, although someone from the book group promised me it would. If Elias Khoury's intention was to highlight the fate of the lost children of a generation, then I'm sure he would have benefited from taking the chance to spend more time with his characters actually on the streets. It seems to me that this endless repetition of Yalo's story just wastes the opportunity of having someone concentrate on your book.
I'm assured that Khoury's book 'Gate of the Sun' is a wonderful read, but I think it'll be a while before I come back for more of this.
2 starts just because I finished. ( )

Having fairly recently read Elias Khoury's brilliant 'Gate of the Sun' I have since been looking forward to reading his 'Yalo'. A somewhat shorter work and not as wide thematically--it does however share some of the same concerns. Set mostly in or around Khoury's native Beirut Lebanon--Yalo is a somewhat confused young man from a broken home who suffers identity problems. Raised by his mother (Gaby) and his maternal grandfather (Abel or Ephraim--the religious name he's taken) --whether his real father is her mother's legal husband who had abandoned them both before his birth or he was born out of wedlock the son of a local dressmaker is part of the confusion he feels. The shopkeeper is chased off by his grandfather who raises Yalo (or Daniel Abel Abyad or Daniel J'alo) very strictly with the idea of having Yalo follow in his footsteps to become a kind of priest for the christian sect he leads. Yalo as a teenager however runs off to join a militia fighting for Palestinian rights only to later desert--along with another soldier they steal their units payroll and escape to France. His friend however takes all the money and leaves him abandoned in Paris with no cultural references and not able to speak he's hardly able to communicate. He is rescued by a Lebanese businessman and gunrunner--a christian like himself who brings him back to Beirut--giving him a job as a caretaker and bodyguard to his wife. The businessman is often away and his frustrated and lonely wife begins an affair with Yalo. This breaks off eventually and Yalo falls in love with another Lebanese lady Shirin who he bullies and hounds relentlessly. Still working as a caretaker he's noticed that cars often stop on the perimeter of the estate. At first suspecting that they are spying on his boss--he soon realizes that it's just a locale where men take women to have sexual relations. He begins spying on them--and then later interrupting these outings to rob them and occasionally he rapes one of the women. Note here that in Lebanon these trysts are very illegal and the participants are shy about such activities being scrutinized by the police. As luck would have it however his affair with Shirin having broken up he happens upon her one night in the same spot--and the ensuing episode is the event that leads to his arrest.

Arrested by the police with Shirin testifying against him--he is beaten and tortured. Because of some of his previous associations while he was in the commando unit--the police believe him to be more than just a rapist and robber. They want his entire life story from beginning to end and they go to extreme measures to get it--extreme enough in any case to literally split his personality--one part of him experiencing an almost out of body sensation while the other pleads and cooperates. He is not exactly who they think he is--someone connected to terrorism--and in the end finally having proof of that he gets a ten year sentence for rape and robbery.

Khoury is a brilliant writer. He has a keen eye for detail and constructs very imaginative plots which are not only realistic in tone and substance but which are permeated with psychological insight. He has a gift also for tying signature moments or events together. Both Yalo and the Gate of the Sun are a pleasure to read and always thought provoking. These more recent works of his are more fleshed out than earlier works and the maturity of this writer is very evident--his works only getting better with time. He ranks as my favorite Middle Eastern writer and I'd recommend both of the books mentioned in this review very highly. ( )