No Road to Paradise

Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature

When the imam of a small town in Southern Lebanon is diagnosed with cancer, the illness he fears and has expected for years, he takes the radical decision to abandon the life he inherited from his father. He was persuaded to wear the robe and turban in his youth to preserve the family tradition and entered into an arranged marriage. While his grandfather and father were once powerful imams, he displays no interest in the mosque. The wife, for whom he feels no affection, attends to her chores and nurses his father, now sick and bedridden, in his house. Though he worries about his two sons, who were born deaf and mute, he takes no measures to secure a special education for them.