Fiction January 1, 1

In Yalo, published in Arabic in 2002, Elias Khoury combs the world of an imprisoned rapist during the violent forced con­fession of his crimes and of “the story of his life.” Yalo is a young man from Beirut’s Syriac Quarter who left the area as a teenager when the civil war escalated in 1976. He fought, then emigrated to France, where eventually, holding a Kalashnikov, he attacked lovers in parked cars at night. He returned to Lebanon and continued robbing and raping. The novel opens as he is being tortured, and this scene is the core around which Khoury builds