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Dear Mr Kawabata

by Rashid Al-Daif, translated by Paul Starkey - £7.00  Quartet Books (1999)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9780704381131 | ISBN 10: 0704381133

As a young Lebanese man lies dying in a makeshift mortuary in Beirut during the last days of the civil war in 1991, thoughts of his past life flood through his mind. In his disorded imagination, he writes to the Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata who had killed himself in 1972, and argues with him about dying, free will, and the value of memory which is for him 'a support untouched by doubt'.
 
Reaching back to his childhood in the mountains of Northern Lebanon, he recalls the time when Gagarin first orbited the earth and he had to insist to his mother that the world was round, not flat. His move to university in Beirut, the death of his father and his entanglement in the violent politics of the 1970s lead to fierce commitmnt and an eventual loss of faith.
 
A skein of reflections, bitter and sweet, harsh and tender, Dear Mr Kawabata is a haunting and lyrical account of life and death in the Lebanese civil war, of Beirut as it was and how it could have been.

(Price & availability last checked: August 2018)

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Dear Mr Kawabata - by Rashid Al-Daif, translated by Paul Starkey

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Dear Mr Kawabata

by Rashid Al-Daif, translated by Paul Starkey

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