June rain

Resource Information

The work June rain represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in San Francisco Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

June rain

Statement of responsibility

Jabbour Douaihy ; translated by Paula Haydar

Creator

• Duwayhī, Jabbūr

Contributor

• Haydar, Paula, 1965-

Author

• Duwayhī, Jabbūr

Translator

• Haydar, Paula, 1965-

Subject

• Massacres -- Lebanon -- Fiction
• Political violence -- Lebanon -- Fiction
• Mothers and sons -- Lebanon -- Fiction
• Christians -- Lebanon -- Fiction

Genre

• Fiction

Language

• eng
• ara
• eng

Summary

"A moving novel about Lebanon shortlisted for the International Prize for Arab Fiction. One of Lebanon's leading writers recreates a village forever transformed by the massacre of one Christian community by another, and its impact on a mother and her long-estranged son. On June 16, 1957, a shoot-out in a village church in northern Lebanon leaves two dozen people dead. In the aftermath of the massacre, the town is divided in two: the Al-Ramis in the north and their rivals, the Al-Semaanis, in the south. But lives once so closely intertwined cannot easily be divided. Neighbors turn into enemies, and husbands and wives are forced to choose between loyalty to each other and loyalty to their clan. Drawing on an actual killing that took place in his home town, Douaihy reconstructs that June day from the viewpoints of people who witnessed the killings or whose lives were forever altered by them. A young girl overhears her father lending his gun to his cousins but refusing to accompany them to the church. A school boy walks past the dead bodies, laid out in the town square on beds brought out from the houses. A baker, whose shop is trapped on the wrong side of the line, hopes the women who buy his bread will protect him. At the center of Douaihy's masterful novel is Eliyya, who, twenty years after emigrating to the US, returns to the village to learn about the father who was shot through the heart in the massacre: the father he never knew. But can the village, alive with the ghosts of his childhood, really provide Eliyya answers to questions he can't even articulate? With an incredible eye for detail, Douaihy describes that fateful Sunday when rain poured from the sky and the traditions and affections of village life were consumed by violence and revenge"--

Member of

• Maṭar Ḥazīran

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

892.7/37

Index

no index present

Language note

Translated from the Arabic

LC call number

PJ7820.U92

LC item number

M3813 2019

Literary form

fiction