The Journey of Little Gandhi
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Book Overview
"Los Angeles has Joan Didion and Raymond Chandler, and Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk. The beautiful, resilient city of Beirut belongs to Khoury."--Laila Lalami, Los Angeles Times
From the author of Gate of the Sun and "one of the most innovative novelists in the Arab World" (The Washington Post Book World) comes the many-layered story of Little Gandhi, or Abd Al-Karim, a shoe shine in a city fractured by war. Shot down in the street, Gandhi's story is recounted by an aging and garrulous prostitute named Alice. Ingeniously embedding stories within stories, Little Gandhi becomes the story of a city, Beirut, in the grip of civil war. Once again, as John Leonard wrote in Harper's Magazine, Elias Khoury "fills in the blank spaces on the Middle Eastern map in our Western heads."Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0312427174
ISBN13:9780312427177
Release Date:November 2009
Publisher:St. Martins Press-3PL
Length:208 Pages
Weight:0.75 lbs.
Dimensions:0.6" x 5.4" x 8.4"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
The Journey of Little Gandhi
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 15 years ago
Certain authors can rightfully be said to own the cities where they set their stories: Dickens his Victorian London, Pamuk his Istanbul, Mahfouz Cairo. So it is with Elias Khoury and his beloved Beirut. For those unfamiliar with his work, //The Journey of Little Gandhi// makes plain both his literary gifts and the origin of his deed; reading his lithe prose, you can almost see the map of that ancient, complex city on every page. The novel follows a shoe shiner and entrepreneur, nicknamed "Little Gandhi," along with his family, his friends, and rivals. Some readers unfamiliar with Arabic fiction may feel a touch of vertigo as the novel begins. The structure, while in many ways traditional, can feel almost post-modern as the plot flows in vast concentric circles, narrowing with each loop, tales nesting within tales, revealing details with each rotation. Yet, Khoury is nothing if not a master storyteller and he has no interest in losing his audience. Slowly, inexorably, he guides the reader forward, as if by bewitching magic. Through his protagonist we feel the decline of Beirut into chaos and civil war, sharing the pain of both the author and his characters. REviewed by Jordan Magill
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