The Mehlis Report - Softcover

Jaber, Rabee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811220648 ISBN 13: 9780811220644

Publisher: New Directions, 2013

Synopsis

The English-language debut of 2012’sInternational Arabic Fiction Prize winner

A complex thriller, The Mehlis Report introduces English readers to a highly talented Arabic writer. When former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri is killed by a massive bomb blast, the U.N. appoints German judge Detlev Mehlisto conduct an investigation of the attack ― while explosions continue to rock Beirut. Mehlis’s report is eagerly awaited by the entire Lebanese population.

First we meet Saman Yarid, a middle-aged architect who wanders the tense streets of Beirut and, like everyone else in the city, can’t stop thinking about the pending report. Saman’s sister Josephine, who was kidnapped in 1983,narrates the second part of The Mehlis Report: Josephine is dead, yet exists in a bizarre underworld in the bowels of Beirut where the dead are busy writing their memoirs. Then the ghost of Hariri himself appears… 

About this title

About the Authors

The author of eighteen novels, the Lebanese writer Rabee Jaber was born in Beirut in 1972. He is the editor of Afaaq, the weekly cultural supplement of Al-Hayat, the daily pan-Arab newspaper.

KAREEM JAMES ABU-ZEID is the award-winning translator of Rabee Jaber’s Confessions and The Mehlis Report, and Dunya Mikhail’s The Iraqi Nights.

Reviews

Lebanese novelist Jaber receives his first English translation as he follows Beirut architect Saman Yarid from restaurant to restaurant and date to date in the hectic period after Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri's 2005 assassination. As Yarid's unremarkable routine unfolds across tense days, we're privy not only to his architect's-eye view of Beirut's structures and neighborhoods, but to painstaking descriptions of the cosmopolitan city's gastronomy, going some way towards accomplishing for Beirut what Ulysses did for Dublin. Fascinatingly, Jaber treats the violence and tension of a city on edge as a spice that subtly flavors and affects Yarid's days. He is an uncontemplative narrator, living simply and in the moment, and relates to few friends or family members. To that end, Jaber executes a surprising twist at the halfway point by introducing chapters ethereally narrated by Yarid's late sister Josephine, a victim of the Lebanese violence of the 1980's. The shift in tone might be jarring to some, but for others, the details of what that afterlife entails are handled with wit and flair, marking Jaber as an absorbing stylist. With 15 novels under to his name, hopefully we see even more of Jaber's work in translation. (June)

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811220648
• ISBN 13: 9780811220644
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224