This Side of Innocence Format: Paperback

“‘Who tore down the picture?’ That is the whole story, from A to Z. They wanted to know who tore down the picture.” So opens Rashid Al-Daif’s This Side of Innocence, the story of one man’s run-in with the secret police of his unnamed, war-torn country. In ironic contrast with Al-Daif’s typically clear and frank literary style, this unreliable, “innocent” narrator relates much more than an A-to-Z tale. The novel’s real story is about the deeply obscure events of a personal encounter with tyranny—the tyranny of the instability and chaos of a country at war with itself and consequently preyed upon by internal and external forces. In the end, we are left with the story of how one man (or country) can innocently invent his own executioner.

Born in Lebanon in 1945, Rachid al-Daif is the acclaimed author of eleven novels and three volumes of poetry. Of the novels, three have been translated into English: Dear Mr. Kawabata, This Side of Innocence, and Passage to Dusk. Paula Haydar is professor of Arabic at the University of Arkansas and the translator of al-Daif’s This Side of Innocence and Elias Khoury’s The Kingdom of Strangers. Her most recent project is a translation of Palestinian novelist Sahar Khalifeh’s A Hot Spring. Adnan Haydar is professor of Arabic and comparative literature at the University of Arkansas. He has authored, co-authored, or co-edited six books, including Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to International Recognition. He has published many translations from Arabic, including Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s celebrated The Ship.