Jabbour Douaihy

Charid al-Manazel

Pioggia di giugno

San Giorgio guardava altrove

The story of a Lebanese murder case set against the backdrop of sectarian animosity from an award-winning author The story of a Lebanese murder case set against the backdrop of sectarian animosity Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction In mysterious circumstances, the body of Zakaria Mubarak is found in an orchard on the outskirts of his village of Tel Safra in northern Lebanon. He had just returned from a long exile in Europe, the US, and Africa, carrying with him a painting by Marc Chagall, the “Blue Violinist,” a gift from his girlfriend in Paris. Suspicion falls on the cousins, who may have killed him to get their hands on a treasure supposedly buried underneath the house built by their grandmother when she returned from America. As investigator Abu Khalid wrestles with conflicting evidence surrounding Zakaria’s death, he is drawn into a picture of the victim’s life, one that recalls fables of gold, sibling strife, the love of French women, false promises of revolution, and the corruption and sectarian enmities that have plagued their homeland. A riveting meditation on the riddle of a crime, Paula Haydar’s eloquent translation pays fitting homage to a compassionate, guiding light of Lebanese fiction.

A Novel

The King of India

A DAZZLING MYSTERY SET IN THE WORLD OF LEBANON’S BOOK PUBLISHING INDUSTRY--Farid Abou Cha’r arrives in Beirut on a hot summer morning with his manuscript, looking for a publisher. He is turned down by all of them—“nobody reads anymore,” he is told. Instead, he accepts a job as a proofreader at the famous old print house “Karam Bros.,” allegedly established in 1908. Disappointed by the menial tasks of checking catalogs and ad copy, Farid secretly hopes that his book will eventually be published. His manuscript never leaves his side until one day it disappears and then reemerges, beautifully printed. Farid soon realizes that the expensive paper it’s printed on is the same that the company is using to manufacture fake twenty-euro bills, and that the person who printed the book is none other than his boss’s wife. Entangled in a police investigation and an illicit flirtation, Farid discovers that the Karam Bros. print house is not what it seems. Douaihy dizzies the reader with an intricate play of appearances and deception, and as always, portrays Lebanese society with exquisite irony.

Printed in Beirut

A love letter to a city of his childhood, Jabbour Douaihy's The American Quarter is set in an enclave of stairways in the Mediterranean port of Tripoli, on the northern coast of Lebanon. Unfolding at the height of the US-led invasion of Iraq, it revolves around the radicalization of an ordinary youth named Ismail. But Ismail's story is part of a larger one that entails his father Bilal, a massacre survivor; his young disabled brother, whom Ismail looks after; his spirited mother Intisar, a maid like her mother before her in the wealthy, powerful Azzam household; and Abdelkarim, the Azzam family's only son, addicted to poetry and opera, and pining for his lost Polish ballerina--all depicted by Douaihy with irony and affection. As well, Ismail's fate is entwined with the disappointments and meager prospects of those around him in the deteriorating American Quarter, and of others like himself forced to crisscross conflict-scarred lands. Ismail's reckoning with his assigned fatal mission somehow comes to reflect our own struggles'for redemption, for faith in life in the face of destructive forces that can erase in an instant what is dear to us. A suspenseful classic for our time, in a superb translation by Paula Haydar, The American Quarter is a powerful, compassionate work of great beauty. Paying homage to the spirit of a beloved old city and her people, it bolsters us with a gifted writer's long view of the threats to tolerance and trust we now face.

The American Quarter

On 16 June 1957, a shoot-out in a village church in northern Lebanon leaves two dozen people dead. In the aftermath of the massacre, the town is rent in two: the Al-Ramis in the north and their rivals the Al-Samaeenis in the south. But lives once so closely intertwined cannot easily be divided. Neighbours turn into enemies and husbands and wives are forced to choose between loyalty to each other and loyalty to their clan. Drawing on an actual killing that took place in his home town, Douaihy reconstructs that June day from the viewpoints of people who witnessed the killing or whose lives were forever altered by it. A young girl overhears her father lending his gun to his cousins, but refusing to accompany them to the church. A school boy walks past the dead bodies, laid out in the town square on beds brought out from the houses. A baker whose shop is trapped on the wrong side of the line hopes the women who buy his bread will protect him. At the center of the portrait is Eliyya, who, twenty years after emigrating to the US, returns to the village to learn about the father who was shot through the heart in the massacre, the father he never knew. With a masterful eye for detail, Douaihy reconstructs that fateful June Sunday when rain poured from the sky and the traditions and affections of village life were consumed by violence and revenge.

Jabbour Douaihy

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