Edward Said described Elias Khoury as an artist who gives ‘voice to rooted exiles and trapped refugees, to dissolving boundaries and changing identities, to radical demands and new languages’. Best known to English readers for his epic Gate of the Sun, Khoury’s new novel is Yalo, translated by Peter Theroux. Yalo is a soldier who becomes a deserter, thief, nightwatchman in Paris, arms smuggler, then rapist. The novel, a modern-day take on the Arabian Nights, revisits Lebanon’s sectarian civil war through a series of confessions extracted under torture. He will be in discussion with the author and journalist Jeremy Harding, a contributing editor at the LRB, who has written extensively on Khoury’s life and work.

All tickets £8 per event, available online or by calling +44 (0)20 7209 1141.

Concessions: £5, for LRB subscribers, Friends of the British Museum, students and OAPs (concessions available from the Bookshop or by phone only).

For more information and to buy tickets, visit:

http://www.lrbshop.co.uk/product.php?productid=5561&cat=256&page=1

Supported by:

* The British Museum
* Arts Council England
* The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize