This review is by Jean-Claude Perrier, for Livres Hebdo, and published on August 21, 2015. Photo credit: The National AE.
Below is an approximate translation.
A subtle novel by Lebanese author Jabbour Douaihy, the main character of which is a city.
Himself a son of Tripoli, Lebanon, where he teaches French literature, a literary critic at L’Orient littéraire, and a translator, Jabbour Douaihy is one of Lebanon’s authors writing in Arabic published in France. Four of his novels have been published here since Autumn Equinox (AMA-Presses of Mirail, 2000). His latest book, the most accomplished, subtle, and captivating, should reveal him.

This review is by Jorge Iván Garduño, for Efekto, published in September 2015.
June rain is the story of a return home, from America to Lebanon, which transforms into the investigation of a crime: Elia seeks to find the reasons for the “incident”, as they call it in reference to the shooting that took place in the fifties, killing his father and forcing him to exile. But the investigation will have to rely on memory, photographs and conflicting accounts emerging from families immersed in an ongoing war.

This is a review of Douaihy’s latest nove by Claire Mazaleyrat, published on the blog “L’avis des livres”, September 6th, 2015.
“At a time when the decline of the city, and the ancient ties that ordered its social hierarchies are crumbling along streets fallen in decrepitude, past allegiances mark the end of a world. It is in this context that the reader follows the path of the novel’s characters, torn between family loyalties and the call of new sirens.”

Published by Le vif l’express, August 28th, 2015
The tale Lebanese writer Jabbour Douaihy writes in in The American neighborhood is not yet home to the tensions between Sunnis and Shiites that it will become after being contaminated by the Syrian conflict. But the rise of radical Islamism, which is the book’s backbone, is already an important sign.

Oscar Brox, for Detour, July 2015.
Approximate translation!
Back to the past, to follow the traces of time, and collect the voices of other lives. Memory has some frustrating puzzles the pieces of which refuse to fit. However many documents we collect, testimonies and details to provide their nuances, the past is never lived again with the same intensity…

This is an excerpt of an article by Laure Stephan, for le Monde des Livres, Published June 18th, 2015
They often talk about their books in France, whether written in French or translated from the Arabic. Some have studied in France or lived here during their years of exile in the time of war (1975-1990). But their moorings are in Beirut, or in any case not far from the city on this side of the Mediterranean and its magical light. Beirut is the place of childhood memories or years of youth, long-term stays or torn …