A review by Margot Djikgraaf, for NRC Handelsblad, April 22, 2015
“Characters are staged at a breakneck pace, disappear and reappear, while previously described events come along again, as if in a spiral that will make the reader lose grip of the story, and feeling the ground fall from under her feet. This is exactly Khalifa’s purpose. This is the life of Aleppo’s residents”

This piece is by Alexis Brocas, for the Magazine littéraire, published in September 2015.
Translated excerpts below.
Since Tchen’sattacks  in The Human Condition, terrorism seems a constant theme in contemporary literature — a mirror that we walk along a path bordered by the collective history and the author’s personal history. Three novels came out this autumn, written in various languages, but dealing with this issue using converging narratives.
In The French, Julien Suaudeau recounts the trajectory of a young, clueless, anonymous, young man from Evreux to to the caliphate of Daech — and from petty crime to slaughter. For …

A review by Catherine Simon, for Transfuge, September 15ht, 2015
As its name suggests, the said “American” neighborhood is nested on a hill, overlooking the river and city, has kept nothing from its exotic and opulent past, except the old memory of an Anglican school. The school was eventually closed, squatted by politico-military people, in this case Syrian in this case, while the neighborhood itself was “invaded by the poor neighboring mountains, where growing apricots, or any kind of fruit tree, was no longer enough to feed their families. ” Welcome to Lebanon, homeland of the novelist Jabbour Douaihy.

This review is by Jean-Claude Perrier, for Livres Hebdo, and published on August 21, 2015. Photo credit: The National AE.
Below is an approximate translation.
A subtle novel by Lebanese author Jabbour Douaihy, the main character of which is a city.
Himself a son of Tripoli, Lebanon, where he teaches French literature, a literary critic at L’Orient littéraire, and a translator, Jabbour Douaihy is one of Lebanon’s authors writing in Arabic published in France. Four of his novels have been published here since Autumn Equinox (AMA-Presses of Mirail, 2000). His latest book, the most accomplished, subtle, and captivating, should reveal him.

This review is by Jorge Iván Garduño, for Efekto, published in September 2015.
June rain is the story of a return home, from America to Lebanon, which transforms into the investigation of a crime: Elia seeks to find the reasons for the “incident”, as they call it in reference to the shooting that took place in the fifties, killing his father and forcing him to exile. But the investigation will have to rely on memory, photographs and conflicting accounts emerging from families immersed in an ongoing war.

This interview was conducted by Susanne Lenz, for the Berliner Zeitung, and published on September 14th, 2015.
A few excerpts of the interview below (approximate translation!)
In your book you describe how you got controlled at checkpoints by Iraqis, Yemenis, Chechens, etc.. It sounds as if Syria is not the Syrians’ anymore.
That is perfectly true: Assad has sold the country. Because of him, foreign fighters dominate. And also because of Iran and Russia. Assad is responsible, but so is the world and the regional states…