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Aslan observes his family's long-standing feud with a rival merchant family, and the blaming of all the community because of his secret and of his being in the closet. One of the memorable things he says is: "why is it that men cannot love one another more, instead of beating and striking, oppressing
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But there's even more going on behind the Farhi household doors. When his father is away, Aslan's mother dresses her son in her clothes, shoes and make-up - and these are their most (and maybe the only) intimate moments together. At any other time, she sides against him with the rest of the family.
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Hilu vividly recreates the twisted alleyways of the old city of
Damascus, its air scented with anisette, araq, coffee and lemon; he equally vividly reveals the hero's attraction to other men and his perpetual struggle to assert himself.
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leads to certain inevitable outcomes - though not by expected means - and, in Hilu's imaginative re-telling, not everyone is who they seem to be. Hilu has taken a piece of history and cast it in another light.
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As he becomes bolder in his forays to explore and enjoy the forbidden nightlife of the city, Aslan becomes enamoured with a young woman singer, Umm-Jihan, and catches the eye of Father
Tommaso, an Italian
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Miserable, Aslan grasps at anything he can to put himself out of his misery, including trying to become fatally infected when there's an outbreak of the plague.
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The novel was one of the five finalists of the prestigious Sapir Award in Israel (2005), and was awarded the
Presidential Prize for Literature (Israel, 2006).
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The outcome of this tender incident speaks volumes about the power of Aslan's father in the community: when this news gets out, Moussa simply vanishes.
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When his father marries him off at the age of 15 to a rabbi's daughter, things go from bad to worse as Aslan is unable to consummate the
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and had been translated into
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Ultimately, his attempts to assert himself to his father prove terrible and tragic.
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The real historical events of "the
Damascus Affair" are the disappearance of a
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Death of a Monk, by Alon Hilu, Sex, lies and a road from
Damascus to Jerusalem
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and dies, while Aslan's secret makes him hide the body. That leads to a
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The novel is based around the historical incident known as the
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350:"Death of a Monk, by Alon Hilu, trans Evan Fallenberg"
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254:in the Jewish quarter of Damascus. It led to
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232:interpretation for the historical events.
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109:Learn how and when to remove this message
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47:adding citations to reliable sources
205:in 2006. The novel is based on the
348:Farhi, Moris (22 September 2006).
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386:- The Independent, book review.
34:needs additional citations for
390:The official site of Alon Hilu
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435:Novels set in Ottoman Syria
420:21st-century Israeli novels
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430:Fiction set in 1840
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