The author of “Rose Fountain Motel”, “June rain” and “Chased away” recently published his new novel “American Neighborhood”. The book tells the story of an ordinary young man recruited for the djihad in Iraq.

RAYA is proud to represent Mostafa Khalifa’s “The shell”, a narrative and literary non fiction story of a man who was unjustly, and without a trial, jailed for 12 years in Syria.

“American neighborhood” is not the story of a particular district of Tripoli, as much as it is the story of the whole city. The novel depicts the city in time and space, and taints it in multiple colors, as the author seems to have dipped his brush in its past and present, creating for us a heart warming portrait.

The novel has achieved through its narrative techniques an accurate characterisation of our current reality artfully, promoting the humane while nevertheless deploring the different manifestations of terrorism. The book also successfully uncovers the political and social roots of the phenomenon [of djihadism], which threatens our contemporary societies with destruction and collapse.

Douaihy draws the portrait of society, in his new novel “American neighborhood “, where each sentence imprints on the reader’s mind an evocative primeval image.

Al hayat, January 2014
It is as if the reader is walking in the city’s markets, inhaling the smell of raw fish mixed with that of soap, of the waste piled on the dirty river banks, and the scent of tobacco: «It is called American Neighborhood in reference to the abandoned Evangelical School… it overlooks the city’s river, and to access their homes, its inhabitants have no other choice but to climb long series of stairs»
Jabbour Douaihy was able to catch the precise moment of transition which we today live through …