A fresh, daring voice in arabic literature today. Alexandra
Chreiteh's Ali and his Russian Mother is at once an ordinary and
extraordinary story of two young people in Lebanon. At the outbreak
of the July War in 2006, the novel's unnamed young protagonist
reconnects with her childhood friend and develops a little crush on
him, as they flee the bombs unleashed upon their country by Israel.
Displaced, along with a million others across the country, she and
her Russian mother have joined an evacuation for Russian citizens,
when she again meets up with Ali, her former schoolmate from the
South, who also has a Russian (Ukrainian) mother. As the two
friends reunite, chat, and bond during a harrowing bus caravan
across the Syrian border to Lattakia, en route to Moscow,
Chreiteh's unique, comic sense of the absurd speaks to
contradictions faced by a young generation in Lebanon now, sounding
out taboos surrounding gender, sexual, religious, and national
identities. Carrying Russian passports like their mothers--both of
whom married Lebanese men and settled there--they are forced to
reflect upon their choices, and lack of them, in a country that is
yet again being torn apart by violent conflict. Like Chreiteh's
acclaimed first novel, Always Coca-Cola, this story employs
deceptively simple language and style to push the boundaries of
what can be talked about in Arabic fiction. Again focused on the
preoccupations of young people and their hopes for the future, Ali
and his Russian Mother represents a fresh, daring voice in Arabic
literature today.
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