Kite - Dominique Edd

Rich and multilayered, with elements of both memoir and fiction, Dominique Edd's Kite
defies categorization. Beginning in the 1960s and ending in the late
'80s, it is at once a narrative of a passionate, and ultimately tragic,
relationship between Mali and Farid and the simultaneous decline of
Egyptian-Lebanese society. Densely populated with myriad characters, Kite
chronicles the casualties of social conventions, religious divisions
and cultural clichs. The differences between East and West are central
to the tension of Edd's book and share the responsibility for an
unavoidable impasse between the lovers. This fragmented
narrative-written in several voices that reflect the fragmented lives of
those caught up in the madness of war-calls into question an entire way
of living and thinking.

In
lyrical, elegant, original and often startling prose, Edd weaves
together multiple strands-meditating on the nature of language,
investigating the concept of the novel, and powerfully depicting the
experience of being blind. Deftly evoking the intellectual scene of
Beirut in the '60s, Lebanon's mountainscapes and the urban settings of
Cairo, Paris and London, Kite probes memory with a curious mix of irony and melancholy, ending up in a place beyond hope and despair.