 |
||||
|
| books in english |
| A House Not Her Own : stories from Beirut (arabic, english) Charlottetown, P.E.I. Gynergy Books, 1992 Lebanon war stories carrying the cries of the destitute and oppressed. |
| The fantastic Strokes of Imagination (bilingual: arabic-english) Elias Modern Publishing House 1995 The despair engendered by the Lebanese war and the effect it had on Lebanese women. |
| Sitt Marie-Rose Post-Apollo Press 1978 and 1997 In Beirut., Marie-Rose because of her sympathies for the Palestinian refugees, and her love for a Palestinian man, has relinquished the protection of her people, the Christians. |
| Leaving Beirut, Women and the Wars Within Saqi Books 1997 The author describes her youth and the civil war in Lebanon in a plea for cultural diversity. |
| Blueprint for a Prophet Transworld Publishers 1997 A love story between a Christian Lebanese man and an English woman in war-torn Lebanon. A Muslim extremist. And a story about the 'arrow of time' |
| Beirut Nightmares [Kawabis Bayrut] (arabic, english, french, and other languages) english ed. translated by Nancy N. Roberts, Quartet Books; arabic ed.; 1976, 1997 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. |
| Improvisations on a Missing String (arabic, english) The University of Arkansas Press 1997 A novel about an independent woman through her childhood in Palestine, her studies in Cairo, and finally as a teacher in Beirut; who struggles against traditional expectations to fulfill her own aspirations for belonging. |
| Koolaids: The Art of War Picador Press 1998 Detailing the impact of the AIDS epidemic and the Lebanese civil war in Beirut on a circle of friends and family. |
| The house of Mathilde [L'Immeuble de Mathilde] [Binayat Mathilde] (arabic, english, french) english ed. translated by Peter Theroux, Granta; french ed. translated by Youssef Seddik, Actes-Sud/Sindbad; arabic ed. Dar al-Tanwir; 1998, 1998, 1983 The House of Mathilde, where all the events are almost a copy and an effect of the events of war happening all over Lebanon. |
| What happened to Zekko [Yawmiyat Hirr] (arabic, english) english ed. Naufal Group; arabic ed. Dar Al-Kitab Al-Aalami; 1998, 1997 A novel for children about the Lebanese war drawn from truth and fact, because 'we ought to remember and consider, so that the past will be a lesson for future generations'. |
| I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops [Aknus Al-Shams Aan Al-Sutuh] (arabic, english) english ed. translated by Catherine Cobham, Doubleday; arabic ed. Dar al-Adab; 1998, 1994 Collection of short stories detailing the complexities of contemporary Arab life. Tenuously poised between the cultures of the East and the West. |
| The Perv: Stories Edited by Michael Denneny 1999 Collection of seven loosely related stories which explore the world of Lebanese survivors whom the crises of modernity have made homeless, whether they stayed in Lebanon or joined the diaspora abroad; the relationships within the traditional Lebanese family when that tradition is shattered by a decade of civil war. |
| Dear Mr Kawabata [Azizi al-Sayyid Kawabata - Cher Monsieur Kawabata] (arabic, english, french, and other languages) english ed. translated by Paul Starkey, Quartet Books; french ed. translated by Yves Gonzalez-Quijano, Actes Sud coll. Sindbad; arabic ed. Mokhtarat; 1999, 1998, 1995, 2001 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. |
| Unreal City Bloomsbury 1999 The narrator, a rich and educated Lebanese from the mountains, returns to the ruined city, Beirut, haunted by memories of his country's fractured past to search for the mistress who betrayed him in his youth. |
| I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters W.W. Norton & Company 2001 The story of Sarah, daughter of a Lebanese man and an American woman and her struggles since her parents divorced, and throughout her love life. And her life as a well known painter. |
| Passage to Dusk [Fushat Mustahdafa bayn al-Na'as wal-Nawm - Passage au Crépuscule] (arabic, english, french) english ed. University of Texas Press, 2001; arabic ed. Dar Mokhtarat 1986; french ed. Actes Sud, 1992; 2001, 1986, 1992 This novel deals with the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s. and focuses on the state of mind created living on the scene through a lengthy war. |
| The Side of Innocence [Nahiyyat al-Bara'a] (arabic, english) english ed. translated by Paula Haydar, Interlink Pub Group; arabic ed. Dar al-Massa; 2001, 1997 The conditions of ordinary simple people in post-civil war Lebanon, who remain at the mercy of forces other than those of the legitimate authority. |
| Open House Quartet Books, Incorporated 2001 Spy thriller set in 1940s Beirut, where everyone is a spy or the spouse of one, keeps or divulges information to serve a personal, national or international cause. |
| The Kingdom of Strangers [Mamlakat al Gouraba] (arabic, english) english ed. Univ. of Arkansas Press; arabic ed. Dar al-adab; 1996, 1993 A novel about Lebanon besieged by civil war; a mosaic portrayal showing the chaos and despair suffered by its people. |
| Beirut Blues [Barid Bayrut - Poste Restante: Beyrouth] (arabic, english, french) english ed. Doubleday & Company, Inc.; arabic ed. Riwayat al Hilal; french ed. Actes Sud; 1996, 1992, 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. |
| The Story of Zahra [Hikayat Zahrah] (arabic, english) Doubleday; arabic ed. Dar al-Adab; 1996, 1990 Novel, illuminating the personal human tragedy of war and madness. |
| The Cyclist Simon & Schuster pub. 2002 Through this psychological study of a terrorist’s mind -a man whose religious affiliation, national identity, and political beliefs are not mentioned- in post-war Beirut, who from being an innocent man became "a dangerous young man cruising toward Beirut with a bomb on his back", the author portrays, in this novel, what happens to a group of young people who grow up surrounded and traumatized by continuous violence. |
| The Boy from the Tower of the Moon Beacon Pr. 1999 A memoir of life in a small Lebanese village right after the Second World War. |
| The Return to Beirut [La Maison Sans Racines] (english, french) Serpent's Tail 1989 The story of fascinating independent women of the upper class and their struggle for the simplest things of meaning to them, while bound by the society and traditions they live within. |
| The Last Migration Panache Publications 2002 The story of Ashraf Saad, a Lebanese journalist living in England -having left Lebanon at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War-, and who, after divorcing from his Lebanese wife and with his two daughters living in Australia, falls in love with Claire who dies in an accident in Mexico, then has a love affair with Jenny whom he breaks up with to end up with his closest friend, Anna. " . . beneath its entertaining surface it portrays the bewildered restlessness of the Lebanese Diaspora, forced out of their deeply-loved homeland by the civil war of 1975-93. However successful and adaptable they may appear to be in their new countries they are profoundly aware of what has been lost — in Lebanon and in themselves." |
| Crescent Norton, W. W. & Company Inc. 2003 Through this love story set in the Arab-American community of Los Angeles of thirty-nine-year-old Sirine who lived with a devoted Iraqi-immigrant uncle and worked as a chef in a Lebanese restaurant, the author locates the reasons behind the financial and political success of Middle-East immigrants despite racism. |
| Somewhere, Home Random House 2003 A novel about the lives of three women who live through war, displacement, separation and exile but are all linked by a special house in Mount Lebanon which is a sentimental symbol of home. |
| The Qadi and the Fortune Teller Interlinks Publ. 1998 The diary of Sheikh 'Abdallah bin Ahmad bin Abu Bakar al-Jabburi a Muslim judge in Ottoman Beirut during 1843, is found hidden in a wall of a house in the rubble of Beirut in the late 1970s. It "tells of his work as a judge, the cases he has to deal with amid the political conspiracies and diplomatic intrigues of the times and the impact they have on his relations with others." |
| The Square Moon: Supernatural Tales University of Arkansas Press 1999 Ten short stories "where Arabic tradition melds with both the modern European world and a Gothic strata of the supernatural.." highlighting issues such as murder and relationships with women. Tensions between the sexes and between identities. |
| The Eye of the Mirror (Arab Women Writers) Garnet Pub Ltd 2001 The author tells the about the upbringing of Aisha in Tal el-Zaatar Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon during the siege imposed by the Phalangist militias in 1976. |
| The Bullet Collection Graywolf press 2003 A novel about the scars of war on a Lebanese family living in exile, its impact on helpless children: one of two sisters recounting the story on growing up in wartime Beirut when her younger sister used to collect bullets, grenades, shrapnel and put them on her bedroom shelves. |
| The Brothers (arabic, english) translated into Arabic at Dar Al-Farabi; Bloomsbury publ. 2003 A novel written by a -51 years’ old- Lebanese-Brazilian writer -born in Brazil and who visited Lebanon for the first time in 1990- “set among the Lebanese immigrant community in Manaus during the last years of the rubber boom in Brazil”, telling the story of Omar and Yacub, “identical twins who despise each other intensely”. The family sends Yacub to Lebanon, to keep the brothers from killing each other. 5 years later, Yacub is back, as or more full of hatred. As of Omar, he has become “over-indulged and self-destructive, with a penchant for binge drinking and reckless womanizing”. |
| The Square Moon: Spernatural Tales (arabic, english) The University of Arkansas Press 1999 A collection of 10 stories with characters -Lebanese immigrants- haunted by Memories of their native land and continuously attempting to “reconcile changes in the geographical and cultural landscape of their lives”. |
| Jasmine and Fire: A Bittersweet Year in Beirut Broadway Books 2012 Having fled from Beirut in the 1980s, 9 year’ old Salma Abdelnour and her family start a new life in the States. Yet, still considering Lebanon as her home, she finally goes back and has to deal with the new realities of life in vibrant and troubled Beirut. |
| A Girl Made of Dust 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. |
| An Unnecessary Woman 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. |
| Learning English Interlink Books 2009 The narrator learns in the newspaper that his father was murdered, a victim of a vendetta that has spread fear and death in his village for generations. He goes back home where he must deal with the tough social environement where he was born, and with the story of his family. |
| What Makes a Man? Sex Talk in Beirut and Berlin Univ. of Texas Press 2015 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. |
| Who's Afraid of Meryl Streep? Univ. of Texas Press 2014 The intimate story of a newlywed Lebanese couple, their struggle to deal with their own differences as well as with the rapidly evolving attitudes in Lebanon toward virginity, premarital sex, and abortion… depicting a portrait of love, lust, and marriage. |
| Women of Sand and Myrrh Anchor 1992 The author relates the hard life of four women in an unnamed desert state. |
| Dreams Of Water HarperCollins Publ. 2007 Only when a young man disappears does his worried family understand the deep bond of love that ties their family together. |
| A Good Land HarperCollins 2008 This novel shows how the Lebanese continue to love their country despite the violence and fear they experienced during the war. |
| Death in Beirut Lynne Rienner Publ. Inc 1984 In the years following the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967, Tamina leaves her poor Shi‘a village despite her family’s and community’s resistance, and goes to university in Beirut, where she works, studies, and learns about the dangers of anarchy and revolution, and comes in contact with the poorest Lebanese and with Palestinian refugees… just a few years before the civil war. |
| Oh, Salaam! Interlink Books 2014 A portray of the return to life after the end of the civl war, describing its consequences as well as those of gender violence through the story of three friends, an explosives expert, a sniper, and a torturer, who must make a life for themselves in a war-free country. |
| Ali and His Russian Mother 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 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. |
| 180 sunsets 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. |
| The Penguin's Song City Lights Publ 2014 This classic novel of the Lebanese civil war focuses on the trap of poverty, relating the story of a handicapped young man who erases the limits between what is normal and what is not. |
| The Year of the Revolutionary New Bread-making Machine Telegram Books 2008 In 1960s Beirut, our young hero works in the family bakery and spends his free time with his friends. He sings all day while the exhausted employees dream of becoming wrestlers… until his father buys the revolutionary new bread-making machine and they must adapt and forget about their dreams. |
| Autumn Equinox 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. |
| June Rain Bloomsbury USA 2015 In 1957, after a shoot-out, a village in North Lebanon is divided in two, yet the closely intertwined lives of its inhabitants can’t be easily divided as neighbours become enemies and husbands and wives must choose between loyalty to each other and loyalty to their clan. |
| Kite Seagull Books 2012 This story, at once a memoir and a fiction, set in the period from 1960s to the late 1980s, chronicles the decline of Egyptian-Lebanese society through the stories of different characters faced with social conventions, religious divisions and cultural clichés. |
| Carnival House of Anansi Press 2012 A taxi driver, raised in a circus, roving through a crime-ridden nightmarish city of carnivalesque beauty and ugliness, introduces us to the colorful characters entering his taxi. |
| Cockroach W.W. Norton & Company 2008 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. |
| De Niro's Game Old Street 2006 A novel on life and death in times of war relating the story of two childhood best friends caught in Lebanon's civil war, and on the philosophy of suicide. |
| B as in Beirut 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. |
| Other Lives Interlink Books 2014 This novel shows the impact of war and violence on those who live them, and on the meaning of life itself, especially for women. |
| Wild Mulberries Interlink Publ. Group 2008 This novel portrays the life of the silk-growing inhabitants of a Druze Lebanese village during a difficult economic period, through the story of young Sarah and the village’s women. |
| Ka-annaha na’ima Dar al-Adab 2007 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. |
| The Broken Mirrors Quercus Publishing 2015 This novel depicting a portrait of Lebanese society since the 1960s tells the story of two brothers, a medical student and a leftist, both in love with the same girl who marries the leftist after the medical student goes to settle in France… until the latter leaves his wife and children in France, and goes back to Lebanon to find a man known only as Sinalcol. |
| The Qadi & the Fortune Teller Interlink Books 2008 The stories included in the diary of Sheikh 'Abdallah bin Ahmad bin Abu Bakar al-Jabburi –a Muslim judge during 1843s– found in the rubble of Beirut in the late 1970s tell about the political conspiracies and diplomatic intrigues during this period. |
| The Servant Groundwood Books 2013 Sent away from her village by her father to work as a maid for a wealthy family in the city, 17 year’s old Faten falls in love with rich Marwan, and they both must face the Lebanese society’s restrictions concerning the differences in religion, class, and wealth. |
| Ring Around the Rose, a Female in the Middle Eastern Culture Bahsoun Lena, who suffered the injustice of a paternal traditional society, decides to educate herself and her society, and improve the status of Middle-Eastern women. |
| The Night Counter Crown 2009 This novel depicts the life of Arabs in modern America through the story of 85 year’ old Fatimah who makes a list of the things she must do before dying, including teaching Arabic and birth control to her 17-year-old great-granddaughter and finding a wife for her gay grandson. Furthermore, she must also choose which of her children will inherit her family's home in Lebanon. |
| Homesick Bloomsbury Publishing PLC 1998 This novel tell about a boy's struggle to adapt to the new realities of a British boarding school after a sheltered Beirut childhood, and discovering a similar pattern of violence in both. |
| In the Middle of Nowhere Saqi Books 2001 A novel depicting the struggle to belong of immigrants who left their country because of the civil war. |
|
|||
 |
|||
|