Interlink Books
A Road to Damascus
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A Road to Damascus
Author(s): Meedo Taha
A CINEMATIC DEBUT OF A PROMISING YOUNG NOVELIST FROM LEBANON--A FAUX-THRILLER ABOUT A RECLUSIVE BOTANIST WHO WITNESSES A POLITICAL MURDER AND IS DRAWN INTO A PERSONAL INVESTIGATION--A captivating thriller that reveals a family’s intergenerational secrets, a nation’s deepest fears, and an underground world of politics, religion, and society. Beirut at dawn. A bus leaves the Charles Helou station en route to Damascus. Seven passengers are on board, one of whom is a prominent Lebanese politician. Before crossing the border, the bus is accosted and derailed. All seven passengers are gunned down. A botanist studying a rare occurrence of acacias nearby witnesses the horror. While the nation around him plunges into conspiracy theories and chaos, the botanist realizes he holds the only clue to the mystery: his injured Acacia. This sends him on a quest for answers, through a minefield of national fears and family secrets, deep into a private underworld.
Review(s):
"A botany professor in pursuit of a rare Acacia along the road between Beirut and Damascus witnesses the massacre of seven people on a bus and hears the last words of one of the victims; a young man he collided into earlier that day. Thus begins the mystery of who the young man was, why he had a telescope pointed into the professor's apartment, how the professor's hometown fits into the young man's familial history, and who orchestrated the killings, which also took the life of a respected government official. Taha's home country of Lebanon sets the war-torn landscape as family secrets and hidden treasures open to the professor and his girlfriend while they trace the young victim's life story. There's a Hitchcockian tension as each peeled layer of history is carefully revealed, so it comes as no surprise that Taha is a student of film, nor that the novel is in development for a movie. In between twists in the mystery there are delectable moments of banter and conversation between the two protagonists. Taha's novel is a welcome revelation in the mode of Salman Rushdie's literary history-rich tales, though it is more straightforward. In all, a beautiful tale of loss, love, and the decisions that shape us."
ISBN: 9781623719920
Author(s): Meedo Taha
A CINEMATIC DEBUT OF A PROMISING YOUNG NOVELIST FROM LEBANON--A FAUX-THRILLER ABOUT A RECLUSIVE BOTANIST WHO WITNESSES A POLITICAL MURDER AND IS DRAWN INTO A PERSONAL INVESTIGATION--A captivating thriller that reveals a family’s intergenerational secrets, a nation’s deepest fears, and an underground world of politics, religion, and society. Beirut at dawn. A bus leaves the Charles Helou station en route to Damascus. Seven passengers are on board, one of whom is a prominent Lebanese politician. Before crossing the border, the bus is accosted and derailed. All seven passengers are gunned down. A botanist studying a rare occurrence of acacias nearby witnesses the horror. While the nation around him plunges into conspiracy theories and chaos, the botanist realizes he holds the only clue to the mystery: his injured Acacia. This sends him on a quest for answers, through a minefield of national fears and family secrets, deep into a private underworld.
Review(s):
"A botany professor in pursuit of a rare Acacia along the road between Beirut and Damascus witnesses the massacre of seven people on a bus and hears the last words of one of the victims; a young man he collided into earlier that day. Thus begins the mystery of who the young man was, why he had a telescope pointed into the professor's apartment, how the professor's hometown fits into the young man's familial history, and who orchestrated the killings, which also took the life of a respected government official. Taha's home country of Lebanon sets the war-torn landscape as family secrets and hidden treasures open to the professor and his girlfriend while they trace the young victim's life story. There's a Hitchcockian tension as each peeled layer of history is carefully revealed, so it comes as no surprise that Taha is a student of film, nor that the novel is in development for a movie. In between twists in the mystery there are delectable moments of banter and conversation between the two protagonists. Taha's novel is a welcome revelation in the mode of Salman Rushdie's literary history-rich tales, though it is more straightforward. In all, a beautiful tale of loss, love, and the decisions that shape us."
ISBN: 9781623719920