Le courier de l’atlas
Fiction as an Antidote
Every country has its scourges. Lebanon, as a whole, faces the evils of corruption and creeping impoverishment. Jabbour Douaihy, who passed away in 2021, has always been at the forefront of Lebanese novelists in taking the pulse of a comatose country. His latest novel, which has all the makings of a funereal testament, recounts the tumultuous life of a man passionate about literature but whose journey is strewn with failures and disillusionments. He eventually clings to the only solid branch left: his solitude, or rather his seclusion. Although books allow him to dream, to escape his confinement, the poison of the world continues to spread in the air. This novel, bearing the mark of an immense rage, evokes Jean-Paul Sartre for the absurd and isolation, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez for the power of magic. The result is a narrative imbued with a dark and elegiac beauty.