This Side of Innocence (Emerging Voices) [Paperback]

Rashid al-Daif (Author), Paula Haydar (Translator), Adnan Haydar (Afterword)

Book Description

Series: Emerging Voices | Publication Date: April 2001

Winner of the 2001 Silver Award for Fiction: Translation from ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year. "'Who tore down the picture?' That is the whole story, from A to Z. They wanted to know who tore down the picture." So opens Rashid Al-Daif's This Side of Innocence, the story of one man's run-in with the secret police of his unnamed, war-torn country. In ironic contrast with Al-Daif's typically clear and frank literary style, this unreliable, "innocent" narrator relates much more than an A-to-Z tale. The novel's real story is about the deeply obscure events of a personal encounter with tyranny-the tyranny of the instability and chaos of a country at war with itself and consequently preyed upon by internal and external forces. In the end, we are left with the story of how one man (or country) can innocently invent his own executioner.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rashid al-Daif is the celebrated author of eleven works of fiction and poetry. He is best known internationally for his novel Dear Mr. Kawabata (1995), which has been translated into eight European languages. Several of his other works have been translated into French and English and enjoy a wide reading audience. He lives in Beirut, Lebanon, where he teaches Arabic literature at the Lebanese University. Paula Haydar has translated many novels and collections of poetry from the Arabic, including the work of Elias Khoury and Fuad Rifqa. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, with her husband and two children.

Product Details

• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: Interlink Publishing Group (April 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566563836
• ISBN-13: 978-1566563833
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,738,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Not so innocent . . ., June 6, 2010

By 

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

This review is from: This Side of Innocence (Emerging Voices) (Paperback)

Lebanese author Al-Daif has read his Kafka. Once again an ordinary man finds himself in the grip of a nightmarish tyranny, in which he is as much the victim of himself as that of a brutal modern state. There are elements of a novel here (character, narrator, conflict, setting) but the narrative goes in and out of focus, like a dream with a logic of its own. On one level, it's a suspenseful political thriller and on another it's an inquiry into the nature of guilt and innocence themselves.

The subjective experience of innocence collides in the story with the interests of interrogators who are determined to get potentially incriminating information. In this case, a poster has been maliciously torn, and a man suspected of knowing the identity of the person who tore it is brought into custody for questioning. Left alone for several hours, he agonizes over circumstantial evidence that points toward his complicity, and he rehearses strategies to outsmart his captors and to divert suspicion from himself.

Meanwhile, he is confronted with the knowledge that he has made "mistakes" in his life that give the lie to his profession of innocence. While starting out sympathetic with him, we begin to realize that the narrator has been withholding information that would affect our own judgment of his character. Eventually, in a protracted scene involving his wife, we come to understand that in the attempt to save his own life, he is no better and no worse than anyone else. In these increasingly polarized times, it's a lesson that speaks to the assumptions and fears of many.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Which side of Innocence?, May 12, 2002

By 

Bookmaven "Bookmaven" (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: This Side of Innocence (Emerging Voices) (Paperback)

Which side of Innocence? A novel of physical and psychological torture that is both fascinating and infuriating in its ambiguities. The narrator faces three interrogators who demand to know who tore the picture of the person, presumably a politician/leader, that is posted on a public wall. With an excruciating introspection, an `elemental honesty', the narrator tries to answer the question. He doesn't know who did it, but there is, to be sure, some reason to think he might have, given that he disliked the picture, disliked it being there where he had to pass every day. If he is not believed, it is his own fault, given the number of mistakes he has made in his answers, using words that might lead his questioners to think he was avoiding the issue. What words should he have used that would have made their job easier while preserving his own self-respect and dignity?
Readers will recognize Kafka and Camus and the dilemma facing a man whose scrupulous `honesty' may mask denial and whose willingness not only to forgive his torturers but to attempt to justify their actions, almost suffocates a reader paralyzed by the horror of it all.
Is he guilty? Who is guilty? Which side of innocence?
Some have related the book to the dilemma of life in a country - Lebanon - that has been under unbearable stress for more than three decades. The questions there are the same: Who is guilty. Who is innocent? Or are those the wrong questions?