The Illusion of Return [Import] [Paperback]

SAMIR EL-YOUSSEF (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: HALBAN PUBLISHERS (2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1905559070
• ISBN-13: 978-1905559077
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 7.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,142,116 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

SAMIR EL-YOUSSEF was born in Lebanon and eventually moved to London, where he currently resides. He has worked as a critic and essayist for magazines and newspapers in both English and Arabic, including the Guardian, The New Statesman, Al-Hayat, and The Washington Post. He is also the author of a novel and two short story collections in Arabic. El-Youssef received the Swedish PEN Tuchotsky Award in 2005 for promoting peace and freedom of speech in the middle east. The Illusion of Return is his first novel in English.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Conversations in a city under siege . . ., January 23, 2010

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Illusion of Return (The Contemporary Art of the Novella) (Paperback)

This 150-page novella could well be transposed into a stageplay, for the action is limited chiefly to a small cast of characters sitting together in a cafe and talking. They have ideas and stories to tell, there is conflict between them, and the revelations are paced in much the same way as a drama in which we gradually come to know the crisis points in each of their lives. Set in Beirut during the occupation of Lebanon by the Israelis in the 1980s, the novel is a blend of politics and the personal, remembered in flashback by the narrator years later and in another city and another country.

The narrative captures something of the anxiety felt among people living in a city under siege - where there is a high-risk mix of informers, collaborators, an occupying army, resistance fighters, and militias. It also captures nicely how people's daily lives and their relationships with one another carry on - for better or worse - despite these surroundings.

Three lives are lost during the telling of the story, all casualties of political differences resulting from the collision of two people's "right of return" - the Israelis and the displaced Palestinians. For the narrator, now living in London, there is something of a resolution of his mixed feelings about the past in a story relayed to him from a Polish Jew by a friend now living in America - as they meet to talk once more, this time in a cafe at Heathrow Airport. The book takes a little patience, as it unfolds rather slowly, but the ending is worth the wait.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A rich novella of exile and isolation, January 5, 2009

By 

Darryl R. Morris "Kidzdoc" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Illusion of Return (The Contemporary Art of the Novella) (Paperback)

The narrator of this novella is a Palestinian who emigrated from war stricken 1980s Lebanon to London, who receives a phone call from a long lost friend who has also emigrated, to the United States, and wishes to meet with him during a layover at Heathrow Airport on his way back to Lebanon. They haven't spoken to each other or returned to Lebanon after a tragic day that deeply affected both men and their families.

The book's title refers not only to the narrator's belief that it is an illusion that Palestinians can return to their former homes, but also to the impossibility of accurately reexamining memories of the past. It is very well written, and the author, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, gives us a vivid portrayal of the complexity of life in wartime Lebanon, and the pain and isolation that is a daily experience of its exiles.