Bound by tragedy

Yalo

A Novel

Elias Khoury

Translated from the Arabic by Peter Theroux

Archipelago Books: 318 pp., $25

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City Gates

A Novel

Elias Khoury

Translated from the Arabic by Paula Haydar

Picador: 128 pp., $13 paper

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Little Mountain

A Novel

Elias Khoury

Translated from the Arabic by Maia Tabet

Picador: 168 pp., $13 paper

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Few cities have withstood the kind of violence and carnage that Beirut has. Though destroyed by a civil war lasting 15 long years, it seemed to be on the verge of an economic and cultural renaissance in 2006 when it was bombed again during the Israeli invasion. Beirut is a city that has learned to start over, to rebuild itself on top of its ruins, but it is also a place where memories are long and myths are persistent. In his new novel, "Yalo," Elias Khoury grapples with the idea of truth and memory, what we choose to remember and what we prefer to forget. In fact, "Yalo" is composed of confessions -- whether forced or voluntary, true or laced with self-aggrandizement, redemptive for the confessor or entirely useless.

Khoury was born in Beirut's Ashrafiyyeh district (also known as "Little Mountain") at a crucial historical moment: 1948, the year that witnessed the founding of the state of Israel and the resulting dispossession that Palestinians call the Nakba ("catastrophe"). These twin events have had a profound significance for him as a novelist, playwright, journalist and literary critic. In 1967, at age 19, he visited Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, and, revolted by what he saw, he enrolled in Fatah, the largest political faction in the Palestine Liberation Organization. Three years later, in the aftermath of Black September, he left Jordan for Paris, where he finished his college education. Over a long, prolific career, Khoury has regularly written about Lebanon's troubled political life and the Palestinian question. Several of his novels and stories have dealt with the Lebanese civil war; his previous novel, "Gate of the Sun," brought him wide critical acclaim in the United States. Khoury edits Al-Mulhaq, the weekly literary supplement for the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar, and is global distinguished professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University.