Little Mountain - by Elias Khoury (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Written in the opening phases of the Lebanese Civil War (1975--1990), Little Mountain is told from the perspectives of three characters: a Joint Forces fighter; a distressed civil servant; and an amorphous figure, part fighter, part intellectual. Elias Khoury's language is poetic and piercing as he tells the story of Beirut, civil war, and fractured identity.

Review Quotes

"Khoury's picaresque ramblings through the Lebanese landscapes offered by civil combat reveal areas of uncertainty and perturbation unthought of before." --Edward W. Said, from the Foreword

"Without a doubt the finest novel on Lebanon's [civil] war." --Le Nouvel Observateur

"Little Mountain is above all a poem. . . . Elias Khoury, like all true poets, is also a seer. Nothing tepid about these cruel pages. A lucidity equal to Rimbaud's." --Le Monde

"Under the corrosive, passionate pen of Elias Khoury, the city at war, [Beirut, ] re-created. A group of young men-at-arms--the Fedayin--kill and die between the sea and the mountain, between the asphalt and the sky, love spiked with murder and the blood of death mixed indiscriminately with the blood of life." --Le Monde diplomatique

"A magnificent, allusive writing that captures the daily insanity of human beings. In this plaintive, yearning prose-poem of a novel, [Khoury] intones the slain memory of a ravaged city, reconciling itself to destructive madness, yet fiercely clinging to life." --'Est Républicain

About the Author

Elias Khoury is the author of eleven novels including The Journey of Little Gandhi, The Kingdom of Strangers, and Yalo. He is a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University, and editor in chief of the literary supplement of Beirut's daily newspaper, An-Nahar.