Books and writing references

This is the story of a small Lebanese village that only included a few tourist shops until families gradually settled during the civil war, and of its multi-confessional inhabitants.

The shape of this book allows multiple readings through the various possible ways to unfold a series of three times five strips, each dedicated to the occupant of a building, the building where the author spent her childhood, all together forming a community of neighbours, their daily life and light conflicts.

Born in Lebanon in 1981, Zeina recounts her childhood memories of the civil war –started 6 years before she was born– portraying the strength of family and community.

During the 1980s, 10 year’ old Ruba living in her family home in a village outside Beirut watches the civil war tearing Lebanon apart.

This novel shows how the Lebanese continue to love their country despite the violence and fear they experienced during the war.

The first comprehensive history of Lebanon in the modern period, based on previously inaccessible archives, written by a leading Lebanese scholar.

Lebanon war stories carrying the cries of the destitute and oppressed.

The historical myths on which Lebanon's warring communities have based their conflicting visions of the Lebanese nation.

Plastic art in the Arab World has been going through a great evolution since the 1930s. particularly in Egypt, Irak and in Lebanon.

The people of modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine, as well as those of Turkey, Iraq, and Egypt, after the Great War.

How does a human being, wherever he comes from, and wherever he is, build an identity and shapes self and others' awareness.

A young British journalist comes back to England after an assignment in Lebanon but decides to return to Lebanon now under siege by the Israeli army after being disappointed with "his friends and their aimless world of chatter and heroin". "Two societies at the point of collapse: England clinging desperately to the wreckage of its history and Beirut under bombardment".

Wadad Makdisi Cortas describes her experience of the events in the Middle East in the 20th century, including the French mandate, and her dedication towards an Arab identity based on religious tolerance and towards the education of women, until the “Palestine question,” Western interference, sectarian and religious division and civil war contributed to ruining her hopes and her country.

A collection of texts written in Between June and October 1982 while Beirut was besieged by the Israelis.

These poems are an attempt to decipher the Arab Myths and Legends in order to understand their moral significance regarding the preislamic generations that elaborated them, but also towards today's generations.

27 Arab traditional folk stories the author had recounted to the children of her family over the years.

'The pains and ravages of civil war. A man wanders the labyrinths of Beirut out of the past and through the present into an uncertain future, following a trajectory much like that of the city itself. The problems of memory and forgetting, the linguistic and cultural struggles that have exploded the city for the past fifteen years.'

This book is born from a performance that took place in Beyrouth in April 2009. Jacques Jouet wrote and Zeina Abirache drew live with an audience, during 24 hours, 24 episodes of this story set in a war-torn city.

The main character of this novel is crippled and tries to find the reasons for his handicap in the war.

Emigration of Lebanese families after the Israeli attack in 1982.

The author tells the story, beyond the ghost of the war, of the life of his characters; inhabitants of a village close to Beirut where Mar Nohra is known to be the saint who cures eye diseases.

Collection of short stories detailing the complexities of contemporary Arab life. Tenuously poised between the cultures of the East and the West.

The anguish of parents whose children are touched by the 'contagion of emigration', before and because of the Civil Lebanese war.

A novel set against war-torn Beirut.

The itinerary of Lebanese actresses since the second half of the 19th century.

An account of the Lebanese war and its analysis through worried and upset characters.

Childhood memories of the civil war in Lebanon illustrating the impact of its brutality on every Lebanese.

This compilation of poems includes Rashid al-Daif’s “Heena halla al-sayf ‘ala l-sayf” (When the Sword Replaced the Sun) published in 1979; “La shay’an yafooq al-wasf” (Nothing is Above Description) published in 1980; and “Ayyu thaljin yahbut bi-salam” (What Snow ever Falls in Peace) published in 1992, about various issues but mostly about the woman/mother/lover, the earth, the peasant/cultivator/farmer, the war, and the homeland.

A collection of critique articles written from 1972 to 1981 including a variety of interests, and representing a testimony to the transitional literary period from the 1950s to another phase full of questionings an possibilities.

The story of Musa al-Sadr, the spiritual leader of Lebanon’s Shi’a community, who disappeared mysteriously in the summer of 1978, and the analysis of his past, who he was, his personal Shi’a doctrine, his role within Lebanon’s warring factions, and the reason behind his disappearance.

A collection of articles showing the effect of the reconstruction of Beirut on its people.

A collection of articles: Memories related to Beirut's Urban heritage and a continual discovery of the city of Beirut through its changes (summer 1983-spring 1995).

a series of short 'portraits' of the civil war, based, in part, on Khoury's own experiences.

A story of love and resi­s­tance between South Lebanon, Beirut and London told from the perspec­tive of a female narrator.

A dead man who does not look like a combattant, but like a musician….

Five Stories, each one about a theater actor…

This collection relates events linked to the civil war in Lebanon through short stories born from a combination of truth and fiction.

On a cold winter day in Montreal, an immigrant thief is rescued from committing suicide and has to attend therapy sessions, leading us back to his violent childhood in a war-torn country, then into his current immigrant life-on-the-edge, where he sees himself as a cockroach invading the lives of others.

The author tells about the writer and poetess May Ziade, using the title of one of her short stories for his book. He analyses her writings highlighting how much they show the mystery of her life.

The events of the last week spent by a young Lebanese woman in Lebanon before fleeing to Dubai.

An emotional story of war and violence in Lebanon.

This story of two young people, a boy and a girl, with Russian mothers, at the outbreak of Lebanon’ July 2006 war, who flee to Moscow and bond on their way there, portrays Lebanon’s taboos surrounding gender, sexual, religious, and national identities.

The author explains the Lebanese civil war through "ethnic conflict": by examining "the history of confessional or ethnic identity in Lebanon and the civil wars of the 1970s and 1980s".

This story of 3 very different young women, Abeer, Jana, and Yasmine, attending a Beirut university, explores a specific Lebanese milieu and demonstrates how confused one may become because of naming, desire, identity, and branding issues.

The author describes the annual two day Shi'ite ritual of 'Ashura -the major commemoration of the suffering and martyrdom of Imam Husain- in Lebanon and also Iran, India, and Trinidad "along with comparative perspectives on Christian passion plays".

In a novel combining fiction and the history of Arab migrations to the Americas, the author tells the story a group of Syrian-Lebanese who emigrated to the United States on the eve of WW1.

In a novel combining fiction and the history of Arab migrations to the Americas, the author tells the story a group of Syrian-Lebanese who emigrated to the United States on the eve of WW1.

A story illustrating Beirut's fractioned society and identities.

An essay on literature as well as on political transparency and poetry. Fouad Rafka tells about art, about the problems relative to the Arabic society and the world of poetry.

An anthology of Arab-American writers such as Jocelyne M. Ajami, Sara Nadia Rashad, Lisa Suheir Majaj, Hanna Eady, Natalie Handal, Nimri Aziz, not classifying the writers," supporting stereotypes about each of the ethnic identities that are supposed to exist in America. But including "a variety of voices, providing the reader with glimpses of what it is like to be an American from any of the many, varied, multifaceted backgrounds that everyone comes from."