Yalo
Subtitle: a novel
Publisher: Maclehose Press
Published: 2009
Language: eng
Number of pages: 344
ISBN-13: 9781847243911; 9781847243904
Subjects: Torture; Fiction; Confession (Law); History
Description: Yalo was a soldier on one of the many sides in Lebanon's sectarian civil war, and then he becomes a deserter and a thief, a nightwatchman in Paris, an arms smuggler, and then a rapist. And then he falls in love with his victim - who turns him in to the police. This novel is a modern "Thousand and One Nights", a series of confessions extracted under torture, a recitation of all of his memories, all of his sorrows, all of his guilt - and other crimes which his interrogators need him to confess to.
Notes: Translated from the Arabic.

Winner, Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, 2010.