The Boy from the Tower of the Moon

"I have been building a pyramid since I became aware I was here ... in 1947, when I was five," writes the author of this luminous memoir. Each "stone" in this pyramid represents a key moment in Anwar Accawi's life, recounted in chapters of polished prose that bring vividly to the reader's eye his tiny natal village in southern Lebanon: Magdaluna, "the Tower of the Moon." The death of a beloved baby chick, killed by a snake; the moment when 5-year-old Anwar discovered the written word; the day each fall when the olive-oil press begins operation for the harvest season. From these intimate, palpable episodes the author re-creates a vanished world in which time was measured by the position of the sun and the calendar "was framed by acts of God ... people were born so many years before or after an earthquake or flood." The advent of the telephone and automobile ("magic carpet of the twentieth century") link Magdaluna to the outside world and gradually destroy its centuries-old tradition of self-sufficiency; the Lebanese Civil War (1975-90) completes the village's "slow and agonizing death." Yet Magdaluna remains alive in Accawi's loving portrait, a gentle recollection of childhood that doubles as a poignant reminder of modernity's sometimes devastating impact. --Wendy Smith