June Rain

the long version

On 16 June 1957, a shoot-out in a village church in northern Lebanon leaves two dozen people dead. In the aftermath of the massacre, the town is divided in two: the Al-Ramis in the north and their rivals the Al-Samaeenis in the south. But lives once so closely intertwined cannot easily be separated. Neighbours turn into enemies and husbands and wives are forced to choose between loyalty to each other and loyalty to their clan. At the centre of Douaihy's masterful novel is Eliyya, who, twenty years after emigrating to the US, returns to the village to learn about the father who was shot through the heart in the massacre: the father he never knew. But can the village, alive with the ghosts of his childhood, really provide Eliyya answers to questions he can't even articulate.