Published by The National, July 20th, 2017
Jabbour Douaihy’s The American Quarter is a strange and complex look into a Tripoli neighbourhood. In American Neighborhood, Lebanese writer Jabbour Douaihy narrates the intersection of three lives in an impoverished Tripoli district in northern Lebanon.

Published by The Jordan Times, February 11th, 2018
Tripoli, past and present
Lebanese novelist Jabbour Douaihy situates his story in Tripoli, in the north of his country. Though it is Lebanon’s second largest city and filled with noteworthy ancient architecture, particularly from the Mamluk period, Tripoli seldom gets the attention it merits.

Published by Kirkus Reviews, September 13th, 2017
A cross-section of life in one Tripoli neighborhood, from a wealthy resident to a housecleaner to a terrorist. This brisk and affecting novel by veteran Lebanese writer Douaihy (June Rain, 2015, etc.) is set during the early stages of the Iraq War and follows three archetypal characters.

Olivia Snaije writes a portrait of Dujols, for Publishing Perspectives, January 2016
Arabic literature is notoriously difficult to translate — not only for the complexity of the language but also for the variety of dialects and the challenge of making the prose accessible to Western readers. Arabic literary translators are few and far between, and the Arabic-to-English translators have become, in their world, akin to rock stars, thanks to the establishment in 2005 of the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic literary translation. In France, although translators are given more recognition …

By Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun, for En attendant Nadeau, published on February 10, 2016
The American neighbourhood, last novel Jabbour Douaihy, is as a long love letter to Tripoli, Northern Lebanese city where the author spent much of his childhood and where he teaches French literature …
This beautiful novel, of classical style with the fate of its characters intersecting and intertwining, with no downtimes, is a pleasurable and emotional read.

This beautiful novel, of classical style with the fate of its characters intersecting and intertwining, with no downtimes, is a pleasurable and emotional read. …

By Jabbour Douaihy, for Le Monde des Livres, November 19th, 2015
Photo credit: La Croix
 
We who, in the late 1970s, retreated, fleeing to Paris, during a first war, civil war among other things, which devastated Beirut and Lebanon as a whole, with its share of violence, where mere membership to a given community transformed men into targets. We who, today watch today in shock the tearful faces, sadly familiar to us, of the victims’ parents who have fallen simply they were there, a mother or a friend who seeks to understand, who cannot admit, and who, with the …