Confessions - Softcover

Jaber, Rabee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811220672 ISBN 13: 9780811220675

Publisher: New Directions, 2016

Synopsis

A powerful novel about trauma and forgiveness
Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction
Finalist for the PEN Translation Prize
Finalist for the USA Translation Award

During the violence and chaos of the Lebanese Civil War, a car pulls up to a roadblock on a narrow side street in Beirut. After a brief and confused exchange, several rounds of bullets are fired into the car, killing everyone inside except for a small boy of four or five. The boy is taken to the hospital, adopted by one of the assassins, and raised in a new family. “My father used to kidnap and kill people …” begins this haunting tale of a child who was raised by the murderer of his real family. The narrator of Confessions doesn’t shy away from the horrible truth of his murderous father―instead he confronts his troubled upbringing and seeks to understand the distortions and complexities of his memories, his war-torn country, and the quiet war that rages inside of him.

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

"My father used to kidnap people and kill them." Who can resist that opening line? In a long and sometimes rambling narrative, Maroun describes growing up in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. His father and older brother disappear for days with no explanation, and no one dares ask where they go. Maroun has an ailing mother, and he lives in the shadow of his dead older brother, who shares his name. He doesn't learn all the family secrets until his older brother tells all while their father is on his deathbed, and the guilt and turmoil almost destroy Maroun. Teens will understand the boy's desire to use education to escape from his existing life—he learns English because he knows he wants to move away from Lebanon. Maroun copes with depression in college as he comes to terms with his personal history and the emotional abuse he endured as a child. Give to teens who enjoy reading coming-of-age novels that take place in other countries, such as Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. VERDICT This is an accessible Middle Eastern novel that will fill a gap in most libraries.—Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL

One day in 1976, Maroun, the narrator of this moving short novel from Lebanese author Jaber, is shot and wounded on the demarcation line that divides Beirut. A small child at the time, Maroun loses one family but gains another. "My father used to kidnap people and kill them," Maroun says in the arresting opening sentence about the man who adopts him. This new father has been committing these crimes ever since the murder of his little boy, whose bloody corpse with its tattered clothes was "dumped on the road between the Museum and the Hôtel-Dieu." Maroun grows up in a Beirut where war is almost a constant between 1976 and 1990. His untrustworthy memory and his place in his new family are ever-present concerns in a tortured tale that reveals the amazing ability of people to carve normality out of the most extreme and brutal conditions. Jaber sketches many memorable characters, none more unforgettable than his forever unsettled narrator. (Mar.)\n

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811220672
• ISBN 13: 9780811220675
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128