Books and writing references

A portrayal of Beirut’s Shi’i community in Beirut who considers itself at once modern, cosmopolitan, and pious, leading to an analysis of the ways piety is understood and expressed individually and collectively.

The 1860 civil wars in Mount Lebanon which spilled over to Syria to become "the most severe sectarian outbreak in the history of Ottoman Syria and Lebanon."

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.

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.

French-speaking in Lebanon confronted with the 'arabisation in education and the competition against English as the second-spoken language.

The author tells about what he saw of the sufferings the Lebanese people went through because of the war.

An illustrated study on cinema in the Arab World 'tracing its development from colonial times to the late 20th century, combining a detailed history - economic, ideological, and aesthetic - with in-depth analysis.'

In this poetry collection, the author addresses issues concerning women and the Lebanese civil war, socially and historically, expressing pain and loss caused by her own separation from her nation, and asserting that the nation can begin its social transformation through expressing the erotic and accepting female sexuality.

A description of “the plans, construction, exterior and interior design, and also the origin of the various morphological types of Lebanese houses.”

Last collection of poems written by Nadia Tueni a few months before she died from cancer. They are a result of the personal ordeal of the author, and the sufferings of Lebanon during one of the most tragic periods of the war.

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.

A child in south Lebanon after the Israeli Invasion

"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…"

Torn between religious faith and love, Asma drives the reader through a war-torn country, Lebanon.

An important issue in the struggle for human rights: identities, minoritary peolples and native communities. This work relates the significant raise of identity related protest movements. The author -a political Science and International Relations Professor- analyses the causes behind that, wondering about where all this will lead, and proposes a solution.

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.

A compilation of texts in homage to Andrée Chédid’s writings based on her aesthetic journey between the literary "genre" and the feminine "genre".

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.

A woman’s memories of a family secret that hurt her more than the civil war in Lebanon.

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.

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.

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.

"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?"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A novel including chapters relating stories set in Palestine, Lebanon and Baghdad, all three sharing the war experience…

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.

A story about war, love, friendship, hatred, the sacred, political power, faith and corruption… through a saga of the Lebanese war.

A collection of true stories by Lebanese lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals.

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.

"Book condemning Israel's invasion, through which Jansen does not hide her sympathy for the Palestinians, nor for the innocent Lebanese caught in the crossfire of their conflict with the Israelis. She places the invasion firmly in the context of previous Israeli aggression and expansionism, showing clearly that it differed only in degree-not in kind-from earlier Israeli operations."

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…

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.

A novel separated in parts; each one relative to one of the characters: three young AUB students during the year 2002; their life in the city of Beirut, in Hamra street, Bliss street, their dorms, and Monnot street, and one of these students’ grandfather recalling all his memories of Lebanon.

A novel about the obsession of a Lebanese immigrant with a woman he left in Lebanon during the Civil War, who had had a number of “boyfriends”. His return to her after the war.

Through her personal memoirs of her childhood when her village in South Lebanon was attacked by Muslim fundamentalists in 1975, the author describes the Lebanese civil war as the first front of what would later become the worldwide djihad, and blames the west for their ignorance and lack of understanding of the Middle-East depicting the historical, social, and religious aspects that resulted in this major critical conflict.

The author describes the cultural boom in the region during the 19th century followed by the impact of modernity that disrupted the Arab identity and led to political and intellectual stagnation in the Arab world.

Beirut, 'Switzerland of the Middle East' between 1943 and 1975; the social and regional disparities which increased the magnitudes of the disparities that plagued the country and led to increased social unrest.

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.

Beirut Fragments is a personal portrait of life in a torn city -Beirut- during 15 years of the civil war in Lebanon, 1975-1990.

The true account of the time of a young U.S. Marine in Beirut -" one of the most hostile cities in the world, during one of its most tumultuous times, in the mid to late 1980’s"- at his new post: The U.S. Embassy.

At the height of the Lebanese Civil War, the narrator, trapped in her apartment for two weeks writes a series of vignettes peopled by those suffering in the conflict.

Brand-new stories by Rawi Hage, Muhammad Abi Samra, Leila Eid, Hala Kawtharani, Marie Tawk, Bana Baydoun, Hyam Yared, Najwa Barakat, Alawiyeh Sobh, Mazen Zahreddine, Abbas Beydoun, Bachir Hilal, Zena El Khalil, Mazen Maarouf, and Tarek Abi Samra, each story set in a distinct neighbourhood or location of the city.

Book on the Symposium organized by the A.U.B. and the Goethe Institute in collaboration with the Association of German Speaking University, held in Beirut from 17 to 21 january 1983; that focused on subjects such as: "The Historic Fabric of Beirut" and "A Post-Modern Approach to Reconstruction".

The history of Beirut, how the city developed and was later destroyed; the process of its reconstruction.

In this study of Beirut –“whose regular heartbeat pounds at well over 100”–, the author describes and assesses 60 years of achievements, despair, rejuvenation and search for stability.