Learning English

No matter how hard Rachid tries to recreate himself, to become educated and worldly—to “learn English”—it is impossible for this hip Beiruti with his cell phone and high-speed internet to sever the connection to his past in the Lebanese village of Zgharta, known for its “tough guys” and old-fashioned clan mentality. When the news of his father’s murder, a case of blood revenge, reaches him by chance through a newspaper report, it drags him inescapably back into the world of his past. Suddenly he is plunged once again into the endless questions that plagued his childhood: questions about his parents’ marriage and his own legitimacy, questions he would rather have forgotten and which threaten not only his new lifestyle, but now, according to the protocol of vendetta culture, his very life. The accomplished al-Daif hooks his readers from page one of this, his ninth, novel—partly with pieces and fragments of suspense-filled plot and partly with his typically idiosyncratic narrator, whose bizarre stories, comical asides and uncannily perceptive comments on human nature lead us through this tantalizing, funny, and sober book about the hold the past has on Lebanon, and on us all.

Rachid Al-Daif is a leading Lebanese novelist, poet, and scholar whose work has profoundly shaped contemporary Arabic literature. Author of numerous novels, Al-Daif explores war, memory, masculinity, gender, philosophy, and social transformation through formally innovative fiction. His publications include Passage to Dusk, The Tyrant, Dear Mr. Kawabata, This Side of Innocence, Learning English, and Who’s Afraid of Meryl Streep? His fiction has been widely translated, and he received the 2023 Mohamed Zafzaf Prize.