What I Know About You, Eric Chacour
“We say that we cry for the ones who have left us. But the truth is that we only ever weep for our own powerlessness.”
I began reading Québécois writer Eric Chacour’s What I Know About You with no preconceptions, expectations, or knowledge about what I was delving into, and I was blown away. There’s a very particular sense of joy when you feel like you have discovered an absolute masterpiece that – despite being lauded in its first country of publication – is relatively undiscovered in the UK; it’s like uncovering a glimmering gem on a sandy beach, and it’s why translated fiction is so valuable and should always be treated as such.
Chacour’s debut novel chronicles the life of Tarek, a Levantine Christian doctor in Egypt, over four decades and two continents. Opening with his boyhood in 1960s Cairo, we quickly learn that the path of Tarek’s life had been written for him; he would become a doctor like his father, get married, have a family, and continue his family’s lineage. Tarek follows his preordained path, becoming a successful doctor with a practice in Dokki and a clinic in Mokattam, which is where he meets Ali.
What unfolds is a tender tale of a love affair that shatters the boundaries of Tarek’s world and places him in conflict with all the prevailing norms and conventions that once dedicated the shape of his life. As the damning consequences of a contested love unfurl, Chacour tenderly guides us through the tragic repercussions of an affair that is both a source of joyous renewal and discovery, and aching destruction.
From the opening page of What I Know About You, the first thing that struck me was the beauty of Chacour’s considered and poetic language, and the musicality of each sentence – something that was carefully taken into account in Pablo Strauss' meticulous translation. As the plot develops, Chacour controls the unravelling narrative with careful restraint over three chapters and three points of view: “You,” “Me,” and “Us”. Having begun in the second-tense, the realisation that you are reading somebody else’s version of Tarek’s story dawns on the reader, and the question of who is writing the story lingers in the background until the narrative takes shape and all is revealed.
So yes, this gem of a debut is written with masterful prose and an alluring structure, the storytelling is engaging, and the characters are authentic, flawed, and human, but – over and above everything else – What I Know About You is, as Chacour himself says best, an achingly beautiful story about our ‘beating hearts’.
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