Éric Chacour (Justine Latour); Pablo Strauss

When a novel receives multiple international awards and accolades in its original language it’s difficult not to approach the English translation with a combination of trepidation and high expectation. Will the book meet the high bar set by the original?

Short of reading both the French and English versions of What I Know About You, it’s impossible to say. Thankfully, Pablo Strauss’s translation of Montreal writer Éric Chacour’s deeply affecting debut novel of love, loss, and longing stands firmly on its own merits.

Divided into two main sections (plus a third that is but a few pages long), the novel traces the life of Tarek from his childhood in 1960s Cairo to his life in Montreal in the early 2000s. The son of a prominent doctor and his formidable wife, Tarek is a member of the city’s Levantine Catholic community, in which status, reputation, and a deeply held sense of identity (and superiority) are paramount.

In the first act of the novel, Chacour takes the reader back and forth through time, providing glimpses of pivotal moments in Tarek’s life as he moves from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. Though expressive and engaging, the second-person narration is contradictory: simultaneously familiar and at a remove; at times voyeuristic, though the narrator shies away from certain details of Tarek’s experience.

The evocation of the political and social climate and events of the latter half of the 20th century in Egypt provides context and colour to the novel without distracting from the central focus of the story: Tarek’s relationships, which are complex and varied in their intensity.

Tarek, as he is presented through the narrator’s view, operates in a constant state of bewildered acquiescence. His parents tell him he will be a doctor, so he becomes a doctor. He meets a girl, loses the girl, finds her again, and marries her because she is the only one he’s ever wanted. His sister is his best friend, but also shows a much firmer backbone than he does, defying expectations even as he works hard to uphold his family’s status in the community.

There are two exceptions to Tarek’s compliant nature. The first is when he opens a medical clinic in one of the poorest parts of Cairo and offers free care to the garbage pickers and others on the lowest rung of society. The second is when he meets a young man at the clinic, Ali, with whom he falls in love. Their relationship, and the fallout from it, form the drama and quietly heart-wrenching action of the novel.

It is only as the first act comes to a close that we learn the identity of the narrator and realize just how devastating the narrative of the preceding pages has been. With this knowledge, the second half of the novel – now in first person – takes on new intensity, deeper meaning, and amplifies the tragedy Chacour has so skilfully crafted.

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.