Guard of the Dead

A series of unfortunate events pulls one man into the heart of the Lebanese civil war, a conflict whose secrets he cannot escape. George Yarak’s gripping novel captures the tragi-comic disorder of war with a dark sense of irony. Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

Aber makes a living in a Beirut hospital morgue by night, stealing from both the bodies he tends and his bosses. But he has a dark history that continues to haunt him. During the civil war, he fled his village for Beirut and, lost in the big city, joined a political party to survive. When he is kidnapped from the hospital, he knows he has not escaped his past and the many crimes he witnessed. But what or who is still chasing him?