Yalo was a soldier on one of the many sides in Lebanon`s sectarian civil war, before becoming a deserter & a thief, a nightwatchman in Paris, an arms smuggler, & then a rapist. & then he falls in love with his victim
- who turns him in to the police. This novel is a modern Thousand & One Nights, a series of confessions extracted under torture, a recitation of all of his memories, all his sorrows, all his guilt
- & of the other crimes his interrogators have him confess to. Beirut & the legacy of the wars of the Middle East are the texture of Elias Khoury`s extraordinary literary achievement.