Rachid El-Daïf

Born in Lebanon in 1945, he is a professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Beirut. He initially dedicated himself to poetry, but since 1980 his work has been entirely devoted to the novel, through which he carries out an implacable and forceful critique encompassing society in general, those who govern it, and all aspects that, as a whole, are at the origin of war. Author of several works, among which... Taqniyât al-bu's (1989, Techniques of miseryand Azîzî al-Sayyid Kawabâta (1995, Dear Monsieur Kawabata), where he tells the reader everything he thinks about a war whose motives he disapproves of, accusing its perpetrators of having long created the conditions that are conducive to it. He actually lashes out with his pen at an entire community in which the perpetrators are also the victims, striving to exorcise, by naming it, a culture based on hatred. In another novel, ironically with an English title, Learning English (1998) the narrator evokes the failure of unity, in a country like Lebanon, between tradition and modernity, always expressing himself in a solitary voice, trapped in the snare of an absurd war. Show us your legs, Leila! This is his first novel published in Portugal. The biting tone of his previous works remains, now marked by a slightly humorous note, once again targeting Lebanese society.