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    The Illusion of Return
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    The Illusion of Return
    Unavailable
    The Illusion of Return
    Ebook150 pages2 hours

    The Illusion of Return

    By Samir El-Youssef

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Meeting a friend after many years’ separation, the narrator wonders whether the events they both lived through in Lebanon really took place. Time and distance give a sense of unreality but when the narrator and Ali meet at Heathrow Airport, after seventeen years, the past slowly begins to unfold.
    Like so many other Palestinians who were born in the Lebanon, they had to leave in the mid-1980s, when it became a battlefield for different militias and armies – Lebanese, Palestinian, Israeli and Syrian. Ali leaves for America and, two years later, the narrator leaves for London.
    Their memories are concentrated on one fatal night when they and two other friends are together for the last time, before tragedy strikes. But for the narrator, a personal tragedy had struck much earlier, one which he would never forget and could not share.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHalban
    Release dateJan 12, 2019
    ISBN9781912600014
    Unavailable
    The Illusion of Return
    Author

    Samir El-Youssef

    Samir El-Youssef, a Palestinian, was born in Rashidia, a refugee camp in Lebanon. His collection of stories, Gaza Blues, co-authored with the Israeli writer Etgar Keret, received wide acclaim and has been translated into several languages. His essays and reviews have appeared in various publications including Guardian, Al-Hayat, New Statesman, Nizwa, Jewish Quarterly and The Washington Post, amongst others. Samir El-Youssef is also a peace campaigner and in 2005 won the Tucholsky Award for promoting the cause of peace and freedom of speech in the Middle East.

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    Reviews for The Illusion of Return

    4/5

    12 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Intimate and touching, El-Youseff's book is about a Palestinian emigre in London looking back on an intense period of his life in Lebanon where he grew up. A brief Heathrow rendez-vous with an old friend, now 'exiled' as a 'collaborator' in the USA, is the book's fulcrum as the narrator recounts how the events transpired leading up to a final night of four friends together for a last time before the dramatic circumstances of 1980s Lebanon catch up with them all.As the story unfolds it becomes clear that the narrator has kept a family secret from the world all these years. The situation of the Palestinian refugees is the backdrop to an expose of the hypocrisy encountered behind 'the movement'-led resistance. The illusion of return in the title is the realisation the author comes to that there is no chance of any return but a symbolic one. For him, when a people has nothing to dream of or aspire to it will resort to a collective living in the past, as if that memory will succour them indefinitely. Sensitively written, this book is an interesting and original approach to the subject.
    • 5/5
      Compressed, evocative, and deeply intelligent, El-Youseff's novella concerns a younger Palestinian man living in London who casts his glance backward on a period of his life in Lebanon he cannot forget or transcend. An encounter with a friend at Heathrow airport, first accused of acting as a collaborator with the Israelis, provides an entry for recollecting the final evening that four friends spent in Lebanon before the Civil War of the 1980s envelops their lives.Like his friends, all of whom harbor some secret or hidden handicap, the narrator has guarded a family secret for years--one that prevents him from "returning" to family in any significant fashion and one which makes the Palestinian desire to return to their native lands seem like an illusion. The Palestinian resistance movement forms part of the reason for his family secret, as his sister, in order to escape a stifling life at home, became a female soldier within that movement. However, she remains so harassed and bullied by her older brother, who wants her to relinquish her role, that she commits suicide, an event that the family seals as a permanent secret by lying about what happened. The narrator keeps a vigil for the memory of his sister and, in the meantime, the friend who had been exiled for collaboration finds the means to return, inspired in part by conversations he has had with a Holocaust survivor. A brilliant and necessary work of Palestinian fiction.
    • 4/5
      The narrator of this novella is a Palestinian who emigrated from war stricken 1980s Lebanon to London, who receives a phone call from a long lost friend who has also emigrated, to the United States, and wishes to meet with him during a layover at Heathrow Airport on his way back to Lebanon. They haven't spoken to each other or returned to Lebanon after a tragic day that deeply affected both men and their families.The book's title refers not only to the narrator's belief that it is an illusion that Palestinians can return to their former homes, but also to the impossibility of accurately reexamining memories of the past. It is very well written, and the author, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, gives us a vivid portrayal of the complexity of life in wartime Lebanon, and the pain and isolation that is a daily experience of its exiles.