What I Know About You

by Éric Chacour Narrated by Nabil Traboulsi

Overview

WINNER OF THE 2023 PRIX PREMIÈRE PLUME

WINNER OF THE 2024 PRIX DES CINQ CONTINENTS

A heartbreaking tale of a family and an impossible love, torn apart by secrets and traditions in late-twentieth-century Cairo.

In a tight-knit Levantine Christian family in 1960s Cairo, Tarek's entire life is written in advance. He'll be a doctor like his father, marry, and have children. Under the watchful eye of the family's strong women, he starts to do just that - until a patient's son, Ali, enters his life and turns it upside down. The two men's unsayable relationship sparks a series of events as dramatic as the Six-Day War and assassination of President Anwar Sadat playing out in the background.

The turn of the millennium finds Tarek living as a doctor in Montreal. Someone is writing about him and to him, piecing together a past he wants only to forget. But who is the writer of this tale? And will Tarek figure it out in time?

From Cairo's grand boulevards and hidden alleys to Montreal's grim winter, from the reign of Nasser to the early 2000s, What I Know About You tells the heartbreaking story of a family torn apart by an epic love.

“This novel is a searing love story that moves between Egypt and Montréal, that shifts between hearts, highlighting the sacrifices the characters feel they have to make for the ones they love. Romantic, surprising, mesmerizing, and so devastating, What I Know About You examines the terrible costs of family secrets and toxic shame.” - Suzette Mayr, author of The Sleeping Car Porter

A bestseller in its original Quebec edition, and the recipient of several awards, including the Prix Femina, What I Know About You is poised to be an international sensation.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

One of the Globe & Mail's Best Books of 2024

"A splendid exercise in melancholy and heartbreak with highly empathetic characters, Chacour’s first novel is beautifully written and superbly translated from the French by Pablo Strauss. It is not to be missed." – Michael Cart Booklist ★ STARRED Review

"The slow-burn story of Tarek, a Levantine Christian doctor whose life seems prescribed for him in every matter, even love...Chacour’s exceptional restraint in divulging information lets the tension build, carrying the book into the revelation of who is writing Tarek’s story. All the author’s formal risks result in well-earned rewards." –Kirkus, ★ STARRED Review

"What I Know About You is a cerebral yet emotionally resonant slow burn with an intriguing structure that serves Chacour’s plot extremely well. In any language, this is a devastatingly beautiful story." – Dory Cerny, Quill & Quire, ★ STARRED Review

“What I Know About You announces Chacour as a storyteller of rare ability: deeply emotional in his substance, elegant and restrained in his style. Chacour is a master of perspective and careful revelation. In his hands, this story about taboo love and a family’s legacy overflows with crushing beauty as it grips readers in its world. What I Know About You is cruel and tender, surprising and inexorable, delicate and overwhelming, necessary and timeless. It is a story that is unlikely to be forgotten.” – 2024 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize jury

“One man’s love for another breaches the norms of gender, society and class in the otherwise modernizing, secular Egypt of Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat. Tarek, a doctor, nurtures a love that comes to him unexpectedly, and that neither his country nor his family is able to accept. Elegantly told and profoundly affecting, What I Know About You speaks to the inherited moral structures constraining us, and to the alienation of a man’s inner life rendered external. Tarek leaves Cairo and his marriage for Montreal, a cold and foreign city in which his otherness is of a more ordinary kind, but when circumstances finally permit, he returns to confront the past and its consequences nebulously in pursuit of him. Here is a quiet, touching story in which the acts of yearning, stymied hearts transcend their troubled genesis and move their hosts towards the possibility of redemption that is love’s essence.” – 2024 Giller Prize Jury Citation

"Inspired by the mot juste of classical French literature and the rhythm of English prose, Chacour’s writing shows a clear poetic sensibility and an admirable formal restraint."– Alexandra Sweny, Montreal Review of Books

"Like Atonement or The English Patient, the slow-burn romantic epic of love, family secrets and sacrifice moves across decades when, years later, the past rears its head in Montreal, at the turn of the century." – Nathalie Atkinson, Zoomer Book Club

"At its core, What I Know About You is a profoundly human story – a tale of love, loss, and the enduring human spirit. Every emotion is earned and resonates deeply, a testament to Chacour’s skillful storytelling." – Britta Stromeyer, On the Seawall

"In his beguiling debut, What I Know About You, Éric Chacour delicately explores the circumstances that create distance between people, and the limits of what anyone can know about those they love...a richly textured portrait of Cairo from the 1960s through the 2000s, and a nuanced exploration of queer relationships." – Laura Stackton, Bookpage

This striking debut is a vivid novel about what honesty can cost you, even when almost everything is left unsaid." – Keith Mosman, Powell's

“A novel of secrets kept and vows broken among the members of a worldly, Levantine Christian family in Cairo, clinging to tradition amid radical societal change from the 1960s to the 21st century. That larger story is fascinating, but it takes a back seat to the even more intriguing twists and turns within the household. The sense of intimacy Éric Chacour (and his translator, Pablo Strauss) have achieved with What I Know About You is astonishing.” – James Crossley, Leviathan Bookstore

"Astute prose that reveals as much through words as it does through silences...What I Know About You is a heartrending novel in which unanswered questions and unvoiced feelings take on a life of their own." – Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews

"A magnificent debut novel about family secrets and loves that endure long after their breaking point." – L’Actualité

"A writer who charts his own course, polishing each sentence until it conveys the totality of the observable world, from the smallest gesture and look to the displacements contained in our life choices. A story of love, memory, and devastation."  – Jury statement, Prix des cinq continents (winner)

"Éric Chacour’s writing is poetic and precise. A wonderful new voice and one of 2023’s most remarkable books." – Mali Navia, Chatelaine

"An intimate conversation fraught with things left unsaid and secrets revealed, told with a delicate understatement. Masterful." – Shirley Saver, Jury Chair, 2023 Première Plume award

"Certain novels leave an indelible mark – this is one of them." – Dominique Lemieux, Les libraires

"So powerfully resonant and ingeniously constructed, it is hard to believe this is a first novel."  – Léa Harvey, Le soleil

"A beautiful debut about family secrets and loves that last far past their breaking point." – Julie Roy, L'Actualité

"A finely honed debut … with an intricate, original architecture." – Philippe Villard, Tribune de Genève

"A story of forbidden love, deep roots and escaping them … leavened with stylistic brio and profundity." – Odile Tremblay, Le Devoir

"A debut that already feels like a classic."  – Mohammed Aïssaoui, Le Figaro

"Razor-sharp yet sensual prose … plumbs the depths of a man torn between two worlds and two eras, for a vibrant portrait of a changing society … Dazzling." – Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec, Le Devoir

"A sensual, intricate, political first novel." – Virginie Bloch-Lainé, Libération

"A sublime story of absence and reconciliation." – Sandrine Bajos, Le Parisien

"The writing is silken, suggestive, skillful and touching."  – Sylvain Sarrazin, La Presse

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2024-08-03
The slow-burn story of Tarek, a Levantine Christian doctor whose life seems prescribed for him in every matter, even love.

As the book opens during Tarek’s boyhood in 1960s Cairo, an omniscient speaker says: “You were of an age to have no life plans beyond what others devised for you. Was it really just a matter of age, though?” The use of “you” throughout the first section creates a distinct separation between Tarek and the speaker, but there’s still a sense of intimacy. The speaker seems to know and deeply feel everything they write about Tarek’s life. Questions of who this speaker is, and whether it could be Tarek himself, hover over a good portion of the novel. Point of view plays an essential role in how the story unfolds over the course of three sections, titled “You,” “Me,” and “Us.” Tarek follows the path expected of him. He becomes a successful doctor with a practice in Dokki and a clinic in Mokattam, and he gets married. “In the Armenian tradition, it fell to your wife’s mother to welcome you into your new home. She offered you a spoonful of honey with nuts, to wish you a sweet life. The spell lasted barely a year.” Tarek’s daily routine is shaken when he meets Ali, who arrives at the clinic seeking help for his mother. The initial medical appointment turns into many visits Tarek pays to Ali and his mother, which now include dinner and conversation. Ali’s mother, whose health has deteriorated, asks Tarek to let Ali work at the clinic. He agrees, and the bond between Ali and Tarek becomes even stronger. Then everything changes for Tarek in a moment: “You were like a child who seizes a momentary lapse in their parent’s attention to open a box of matches. The child doesn’t know when exactly it will happen, or what kind of fire they will spark. But they understand the possibility, however remote.” As they so often do, the speaker adeptly locates a metaphor for the situation and the feelings that result. Chacour’s exceptional restraint in divulging information lets the tension build, carrying the book into the revelation of who is writing Tarek’s story.

All the author’s formal risks result in well-earned rewards.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940194611409
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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