180 sunsets
Hassan Daoud
Novel
Saqi 2010
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. |
38, rue Youssef Semaani
Zeina Abirached
Novel
Cambourakis 2006
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. |
A Girl Made of Dust
Nathalie Abi-Ezzi
Novel
Fourth Estate 2008
During the 1980s, 10 year’ old Ruba living in her family home in a village outside Beirut watches the civil war tearing Lebanon apart. |
A Good Land
Nada Awar Jarrar
Novel
HarperCollins 2008
This novel shows how the Lebanese continue to love their country despite the violence and fear they experienced during the war. |
A House Not Her Own : stories from Beirut
Emily Nasrallah english ed. translated by Thuraya Khalil-Khouri
Novel
Charlottetown, P.E.I. Gynergy Books, 1992
Lebanon war stories carrying the cries of the destitute and oppressed. |
Abwab Al-Madinah [Gates of the City]
Elias Khoury
Novel
arabic ed. Dar el-Adab; english ed. Translated by Paula Haydar, Cloth; 1981, 1990, 1993
'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.' |
Agatha de Beyrouth
Zeina / Jacques Abirached / Jouet
Novel
Cambourakis 2011
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. |
Ahl al'Hawa [Les Illuminés]
Hoda Barakat
Novel
arabic ed. Dar An-Nahar; french ed. translated by François Zabbal, Actes Sud; 1999, 1993
The main character of this novel is crippled and tries to find the reasons for his handicap in the war. |
Ahl al-Thill
Rashid al-Daif
Novel
Dar Moukhtarat 1982
Emigration of Lebanese families after the Israeli attack in 1982. |
Ain Wardé
Jabbour Doueihy
Novel
Dar An-Nahar 2002
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. |
Aknus Al-Shams Aan Al-Sutuh [I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops]
Hanan el-Sheikh
Novel
arabic ed. Dar al-Adab; english ed. translated by Catherine Cobham, Doubleday; 1994, 1998
Collection of short stories detailing the complexities of contemporary Arab life. Tenuously poised between the cultures of the East and the West. |
Al Iklaa Aaks al-Zaman [Flight Against Time]
Emily Nasrallah
Novel
arabic ed. Naufal Group; english ed. translated by Issa Boullata, University of Texas Press; 1981, 1987
The anguish of parents whose children are touched by the 'contagion of emigration', before and because of the Civil Lebanese war. |
AL KATIBAT
Therese-Aouad Basbous
Novel
1993
A novel set against war-torn Beirut. |
Al Thill wal'Sada
Youssef Habchi Al-Achkar
Novel
Dar An-Nahar 1989
An account of the Lebanese war and its analysis through worried and upset characters. |
Al-Jabal al-Saghir [The Little Mountain - La Petite Montagne]
Elias Khoury
Novel
arabic ed. Mouassassat al-Abhath al-Aarabiyat; french ed. Arléa; 1977, 1987
a series of short 'portraits' of the civil war, based, in part, on Khoury's own experiences. |
Al-Khataya ash-sha'i'a (Common Sins)
Fatin al-Murr
Novel
Dar An-Nahar 1999
A story of love and resistance between South Lebanon, Beirut and London told from the perspective of a female narrator. |
Al-khulwa al-malakiyya (Royal Solitude)
Antoine al-Duwaihi
Novel
Dar al-Nahar 2001
A dead man who does not look like a combattant, but like a musician…. |
AL-MASHHAD Al-AKHEER
May Menassa
Novel
Dar An-Nahar 2003
Five Stories, each one about a theater actor… |
Al-mubtada’ w-al-khabar: Short Stories (Subject and Predicate)
Elias Khoury
Novel
Mu’assasat al-Abhath al-Arabiyya 1984
This collection relates events linked to the civil war in Lebanon through short stories born from a combination of truth and fiction. |
Al-sirsar
Rawi Hage
Novel
Sharikat al-Matbu‘at publ. 2010
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. |
Al-usboo‘ al-akheer (The Last Week)
Hala Kawtharani
Novel
Dar al-Saqi 2006
The events of the last week spent by a young Lebanese woman in Lebanon before fleeing to Dubai. |
Al-Wujuh al-Bayda' [Un Parfum de Paradis]
Elias Khoury
Novel
arabic ed. Dar Ibn-Rushd; french ed. Arlea, Seuil; 1992, 1981
An emotional story of war and violence in Lebanon. |
Ali and His Russian Mother
Alexandra Chreiteh
Novel
Interlink Books 2015
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. |
Always Coca-Cola
Alexandra Chreiteh
Novel
Interlink Books 2012
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. |
America (America)
Rabee Jaber
Novel
Al-Markaz al-Thaqafi al-Arabi 2009
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. |
Amerika
Rabee Jaber
Novel
Gallimard 2013
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. |
Amers
Yasmina Traboulsi
Novel
Mercure de France 2007
A story illustrating Beirut's fractioned society and identities. |
An Unnecessary Woman
Rabih Alameddine
Novel
Grove Press 2014
This novel depicts the portrait of a reclusive woman and her visions of past and present Beirut, describing her memories of the civil war in Lebanon and her own life. |
ANA, HIYA, ANTI
Elham Mansour
Novel
Riad el-Rayyes Books 2000
A novel about the homosexuality amongst women in the Middle-Eastern society where they already are considered as being inferior -so how dare they show another flaw?!-. A subject that also attacks this male society showing the inability of men to satisfy women. |
As Though She Were Sleeping
Elias Khoury
Novel
Humphrey Davies 2011
The story of Milia depicts the profound conflicts of the 1947 Arab World: in order to “hide away” from her new husband and society, she lives in a dream-world where she converses with the dead and foresees the future, until this parallel realm becomes more familiar and easy to live with than "reality", and both become increasingly entangled. |
Asabi' Mariam
Aida Saidi
Novel
World Book Publishing 1998
A child in south Lebanon after the Israeli Invasion |
ASHYA BASEETA
Nada Moughaizel Nasr
Novel
Dar An-Nahar 2003
"One day, images came to my mind… I picked them in the language they came in and wrote them down serenely. I did not consider myself a writer, and thought that idea funny, stupid…" |
Asma une Jeune Fille du Liban
Elham Chamoun-Abdelnour
Novel
L'Harmattan 2000
Torn between religious faith and love, Asma drives the reader through a war-torn country, Lebanon. |
Autumn Equinox
Jabbour Douaihy
Novel
Univ. of Arkansas Press 2001
This is the diary of a young man who returns from his college in the United States to his Lebanese village, and tries to adjust to his environment, and even to redefine himself, faced with his new reality and the people in his village, far from his college years. |
Awdat al-almani ila rushdihi (The Return of the German to His Senses)
Rashid al-Daif
Novel
Riad El-Rayye; Al-Saqi Book 2012
A “novelized biography” by Lebanese novelist Rashid al-Daif and and the riposte of German novelist Joachim Helfer demonstrating how attitudes toward sex and masculinity across cultural contexts are intertwined with the work of fiction, thereby highlighting the importance of fantasy in understanding the Other”; Rashid al-Daif talks about his encounter with gay Joachim Helfer, highlighting that the HIV virus is more widely-spread in gay communities, and not missing an opportunity to claim his heterosexuality loud and clear and say that life without women is colorless. This book also includes essays by specialists in Arabic and German literature shedding light on the discourse around sex between the two authors from different cultural contexts. |
Ayyam Barees (Days of Paris)
Renée Hayek
Novel
Al-Markaz al-Thaqafi al-Arabi 2004
The story of three persons living between post-war Beirut and Paris: a daughter travelling, a mother remembering, and a doctor who can’t find his lost brother. |
AYYAM BAYRUT
Nazek Saba Yared
Novel
Dar Al-Kitab Al-Alami 2002
The adventures of Farid in Beirut -a city he had never been to before- with good people he meets on his way, throughout his journey. |
Ayyam Za'idat [Des jours en trop]
Hassan Daoud
Novel
arabic ed. Dar al Jadeed; french ed. translated by Edwige Lambert, Actes-Sud/Sindbad; 1990 and 2000, 1998
A man dying, scared of death listens to his son telling him how easy it is, as if he were not afraid of his own death. |
AYYUHUMA HUA
Elham Mansour
Novel
Riad el-Rayyes Books 2003
"At the end of the first day, we all prayed and went to bed. I cannot describe the first night we spent in the convent; I slept alone in a bed. It was the first time this had ever happened to me. I used to sleep in my mother’s bed on the floor. Her warmth was enough for me, even during the coldest nights. I did not feel warm during that night, even though it was summer. I stayed awake the whole night, almost shivering. Was it the cold? No, it was this fast travel in time: In one day, I had crossed a distance equal to many years, I had crossed the distance and the time period between the gas lamp and the electric lamp. Can this happen in a few hours?" |
Azizi al-Sayyid Kawabata [Dear Mr Kawabata - Cher Monsieur Kawabata]
Rashid al-Daif
Novel
arabic ed. Mokhtarat; Riad el-Rayyes; english ed. translated by Paul Starkey, Quartet Books; french ed. translated by Yves Gonzalez-Quijano, Actes Sud
During the last days of the Lebanese Civil War, a young lebanese man dying, writes a letter to Yasunari Kawabata, the Japanese novelist who won the 1968 Nobel Prize for literature and killed himslef in 1972; creating/imagining a dialogue with him about dying, free will and the value of memory. |
Azizi al-Sayyid Kawabata [Dear Mr Kawabata - Cher Monsieur Kawabata]
Rashid al-Daif
Novel
2nd ed. in arabic, Riad el-Rayyes; arabic ed. Mokhtarat; english ed. translated by Paul Starkey, Quartet Books; french ed. translated by Yves Gonzale
During the last days of the Lebanese Civil War, a young lebanese man dying, writes a letter to Yasunari Kawabata, the Japanese novelist who won the 1968 Nobel Prize for literature and killed himslef in 1972; creating/imagining a dialogue with him about dying, free will and the value of memory. |
B as in Beirut
Iman Humaydan Younes
Novel
Interlink Books
This novel tells the story of four women living in the same Beirut apartment during the civil war, and their daily struggles, each one having to deal with her personal problems. |
B comme Beyrouth: ville à vif
Iman Humaydan Younes
Novel
Éditions Le Sycomore 1997
This novel tells the story of four women living in the same Beirut apartment during the civil war, and their daily struggles, each one having to deal with her personal problems. |
B mithl Bayrut mithl Bayt
Iman Humaydan Younes
Novel
Al-Hay’a al-‘Amma li-Qusur al-Thaqafa
This novel tells the story of four women living in the same Beirut apartment during the civil war, and their daily struggles, each one having to deal with her personal problems. |
Bab al-Shams [La Porte du soleil]
Elias Khoury
Novel
arabic ed. Dar al-Adab; french ed. Actes Sud; 1998, 2002
In an almost disused hospital of the Chatila camp in Lebanon, the narrator, in order to revive his spiritual father -a hero of the Palestinian resistance- from a coma, relates the Lebanese Civil War that has just ended, the most important events of his own existence and the often painful stories of men and women snatched by History after their expulsion from Palestine in 1948. |
Bagdad: Des morts qui sonnent plus fort que d'autres [Baghdad: Deaths Untold]
Ezza Agha Malak
Novel
Ed. des Ecrivains (french); Linus publ. (english) 2006, 2011
A novel including chapters relating stories set in Palestine, Lebanon and Baghdad, all three sharing the war experience… |
Balad al-Thulooj (The Land of the Snows)
Renée Hayek
Novel
Al-Markaz al-Thaqafi al-Arabi 2001
This novel portrays exile and identity through the story of a man who left Lebanon in 1984 during the civil war at the age of 18, and came back at age 33. |
Barid Bayrut [Beirut Blues - Poste Restante: Beyrouth]
Hanan el-Sheikh
Novel
arabic ed. Riwayat al Hilal; english ed. Doubleday & Company, Inc.; french ed. Actes Sud; 1992, 1996, 1995
The problems and hopes of a part of this Lebanese society attached to their torn country, refusing to let go of real life and hide out in the unreal world of arms, or the false world of exile. |
Bayn intizarayn (Between Two Periods of Waiting): short stories
Fatin al-Murr
Novel
Dar al-Jadeed 1999
Two neighbors, a man and a woman, both refugees, who acquaintance develops into friendship then into a kind of love mirroring life in Lebanon, a love that lives by the day… |
Bayrut '75 [Beirut '75]
Ghada Samman
Novel
arabic ed. Dar al-Taliaat; english ed. translated by Nancy N. Roberts, University of Arkansas Press; 1974, 1995
Through the stories of five characters who discover, in Beirut, they are victims of corruption, class discrimination and blind allegiance to tradition, the author defines the struggles of the Lebanese society, depicting prophetically the social and political causes of the Lebanese civil war in 1975. |
