"Before I continue to pour out my soul, let me confide in you that Lebanon is one of those countries that produces nothing but its own periodic tragedies." --"Dear Mr Kawabata," by Rashid al-Daif
BEIRUT -- Yasunari Kawabata's mark on the literary world did not fade much after he died by his own hand in a gas-filled room in 1972. Such was the universal regard for his work that, 23 years later, a Lebanese author would address a novel in Arabic to the Nobel Prize-winning Japanese writer.
"Dear Mr Kawabata," however, is not a belated fan letter, but Rashid al-Daif's semi-autobiographical account of a boy growing up poor in a Christian Maronite mountain village who falters on the Marxist road he sets out on as an adult.