The Breakdown of the state in Lebanon 1967-1976
Farid el-Khazen
History Analysis
I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 1999
The author, -a Professor of Political Studies-, explores a divided society with an open political system in order to understand "why did the Lebanese state, the most open and democratic in the Middle East, break down between 1967 and 1976?" |
The Broken Mirrors
Elias Khoury
Novel
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 Brothers
Milton Hatoum
Novel
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 Bullet Collection
Patricia Sarafian Ward
Novel
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 Civil Society and Lebanon: Toward a Hermeneutic Theory of the Public Sphere in Comparative Studies
Michael D. Dawahare
Memory, Identity, Society
Brown Walker Press 2000
Analysis of the notion of 'Asabiya' (fanatism) and its impact on the constitution of civil society and the public sphere in Lebanon. |
The Collapse and Reconstruction of Lebanon
Tom Najem
History Analysis
Garnet Publishing (Durham Middle East Papers) 1999
'Analysis of the causes of the breakdown of the post-1943 Lebanese political system, and the effects of the subsequent war on the system'. |
The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon
Tareq Y., Jacqueline Ismael
History Analysis
Univ. Press of Florida 1998
Based on party documents and literature, and interviews with key players, this study examines the development and growth of the communist movement in Syria and Lebanon, its internal conflicts, and its fragmentation during the 20th century. |
The Culture of Sectarianism
Ussama Makdissi
Memory, Identity, Society
University of California Press 2000
Sectarianism in Ottoman Lebanon in the 19th century (1860s war): A study that describes it as 'a manifestation of modernity that transcended the boundaries of a particular country'; thus challenging the definition of sectarian violence as being 'an Islamic response to westernization.' |
The Cyclist
Viken Berberian
Novel
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 Experimental Arabic Novel. Postcolonial Literary Modernism in the Levant
Stefan G. Meyer
Memory, Identity, Society
State University of New York Press 2001
Analysis of the development of experimentalism in the modern Arabic novel -in contrast with Western Literature- from the 1960s to the present. |
The Eye of the Mirror (Arab Women Writers)
Liyanah Badr Edited by Fadia Faqir, Translated Samira Kawar
Novel
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 fantastic Strokes of Imagination
Emily Nasrallah
Novel
Elias Modern Publishing House 1995
The despair engendered by the Lebanese war and the effect it had on Lebanese women. |
The Fateful Triangle : The United States, Israel and the Palestinians
Noam Chomsky Foreword by Edward W. Said
History Analysis
South End Press Classics Series 1999, 2nd ed. updated
The American domination of the Middle East region: the policy of the United States towards Israel concerning the Palestinians until 1983. Three new chapters in this edition: the Palestinian uprising; Israel's war on Lebanon; the ongoing peace process. |
The Fragmenting Force of Memory: Self, Literary Style, and Civil War in Lebanon
Saadi Nikro
On Literature
Cambridge Scholars Publ. 2012
The study of cultural production derived from personal experiences of the civil war in Lebanon, focusing on a selection of works of literature, autobiography and memoir, and documentaries. |
The Government and Politics of Lebanon
Imad Salamey
History Analysis
Routledge 2013
A study of the origin, development, and institutionalization of sectarian “consociationalism” in Lebanon through the examination of its sectarian politics during different stages of history. |
The Hakawati
Rabih Alameddine
Tales
Knopf 2008
In 2003, back in Beirut after several years in America, Osama tells about the stories of his grandfather the hakawati –storyteller– on his arrival in Lebanon coming from Turkey, and his classic tales of the Middle East, all illustrating an endless war. |
The house of Mathilde [L'Immeuble de Mathilde] [Binayat Mathilde]
Hassan Daoud
Novel
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. |
The Jews of Lebanon: Between Coexistence and Conflict
Kirsten Schulze
Memory, Identity, Society
Sussex Academic Press 2001
An essay about the Lebanese Jews in the 20th century, highlighting the fact that they were considered like any of “the 23 minorities with the same rights and privileges and subject to the same political tensions.” |
The Kingdom of Strangers [Mamlakat al Gouraba]
Elias Khoury
Novel
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. |
The Last Migration
Jade el Hage
Novel
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." |
The Lebanese Conflict: Looking Inward
Latif Abul-Husn
Memory, Identity, Society
Lynne Rienner Publishers 1998
The internal causes of the Lebanese conflict that brought destruction, death and despair on Lebanon and its people. |
The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War, and the International Drug Traffic
Jonathan Marshall
History Analysis
Stanford Univ. Press 2012
Basing his work on previously secret government records, the author explains how Lebanon's economy and politics were corrupted by the drug trade that contributed to cause the civil war by financing the various militias in Lebanon. He also weighs the role of the neighbouring countries that used Lebanon as their battleground. |
The Lebanese in America
John G. Moses
Memory, Identity, Society
Utica, NY Educational Publications 2001 (revised ed.)
100 years of anecdotes, analyses, and archival material in a book about the tides of Lebanese who left Mount Lebanon during the repressive Ottoman Empire and went to America ("... that great human success story, the Lebanese in America, a group who have done so much to help..."-) "where they discovered a robust sense of challenge and fulfillment in boundless opportunity." |
The Lebanese in the world : a century of emigration
Albert Hourani
Memory, Identity, Society
Edited by Albert Hourani, Co-edited by Nadim Shehadi 1992
This book is about the 'emigrants from Lebanon who have established communities in North and South America, the Caribbean, Australia and West Africa, and more recently -1992- in the Gulf and other parts of the Middle East'. |
The Literature of the Lebanese Diaspora: Representations of Place and National Identity
Jumana Bayeh
On Literature
I.B. Tauris 2014
A major study, combining history with sociology, of the literature of the Lebanese diaspora in the world (who continue to write about their experience), focusing on novels and writings produced in the aftermath of Lebanon's civil war, exploring the relationships between place, displacement and belonging, and portraying the global Lebanese identity. |
The Locust and the Bird: My Mother’s Story
Hanan el-Sheikh
Memoirs and Testimonies
Bloomsbury Publ. 2009
In this memoir, the author relates the extraordinary life of her mother. |
The Longest War
Jacobo Timerman
History Analysis
New York: Vintage Books, 1982; Chatto and Windus, 2001 1982, 2001
'Book condemning Israel's invasion, but through which Timerman sees the invasion as an aberration from what he imagines to be the mainstream of Zionist ethics. Much of the book is given over to lengthy descriptions of the psychological traumas that Israelis who opposed the war suffered.' |
The maronites: history and constants
Antoine Khoury Harb
History Analysis
The Maronite Heritage Publications 2001
The illustrated (600 photos) history of the Maronites of Lebanon describing "their belief of God, their attachment to human rights, freedom, justice and sovereignty [and] impregnated with the spirit of martyrdom, sanctity and heroism." |
The Mehlis' Report
Rabee Jaber
History Analysis
New Directions Publ. Corp. 2013
About the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafic Hariri. |
The Night Counter
Alia Younis
Novel
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. |
The Penguin's Song
Hassan Daoud
Novel
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 Perv: Stories
Rabih Alameddine
Novel
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. |
The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology
Edited by Nathalie Handal
On Literature
Interlink 2000
A bilingual - Arabic and English- introduction to Arab women poets of the twentieth century in exile or living in non-Arab countries, and women poets of Arab descent from Europe and North America. (Elmaz Abi-Nader, Etel Adnan, 'Aisha Arnaout, Andree Chedid, Nada al-Hage, Hoda Hussein, Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Joanna Kadi, Vénus Khoury-Ghata, Nazik al-Mala'ika, Houda al-Na'mani, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Zakiyya Malallah, Naomi Shihab Nye, Amina Said, Munia Samara, Lina Tibi, Fadwa Tuqan . . . ), who are known and unknown to the West, and demonstrates the wide diversity of Arab women's poetry, which extends to other languages besides Arabic and English (French, Swedish). |
The Politics of Violence, Truth and Reconciliation in the Arab Middle East
Sune, Anders Haugbolle, Hastrup
History Analysis
Routledge 2008
This work includes studies of six Arab countries where a number of initiatives aiming at promoting the “truth” and justice are challenging the legacies of political violence. |
The Qadi & the Fortune Teller
Nabil Saleh
Novel
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 Qadi and the Fortune Teller
Nabil Saleh
Novel
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 Return to Beirut [La Maison Sans Racines]
Andree Chedid translated by Ros Schwartz
Novel
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 Rise and Fall of Christian Lebanon
Bassem Khalifah
Memory, Identity, Society
New York Press, 2001 (2nd rev ed.), 1997 (1st ed.)
Christian Lebanon: Relation between the sacred and the political. |
The Root : The Marines in Beirut, August 1982-February 1984
Eric Hammel (Introduction)
Memoirs and Testimonies
Pacifica Military History 1993
A 'detailed account of individual rescue effort, with an emphasis on the August through October 1983 period" written from the viewpoint of the Marines who fought in Beirut. |
The Servant
Fatima Sharafeddine
Novel
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. |
The Shi'is of Jabal 'Amil and the New Lebanon: Community and Nation-State, 1918-1943
Tamara, Fouad Chalabi, Ajami
History Analysis
Palgrave Macmillan 2006
This study analyses the increased political activism of the Shi’a community, and explores how Arab nationalism went from being an ideology of the opposition to a tool for political domination. |
The Side of Innocence [Nahiyyat al-Bara'a]
Rashid al-Daif
Novel
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. |
The Silent Revolution in Lebanon: Changing Values of the Youth
Muhammad Faour
Memory, Identity, Society
A.U.B. Press 1999
The silent revolution of the Lebanese youth that is seeping through society because of democratic practices within the Lebanese nuclear family at the expense of authoritarianism. |
The Square Moon: Spernatural Tales
Ghada Samman translated from Arabic by Issa J. Boullata
Novel
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”. |
The Square Moon: Supernatural Tales
Ghada Samman translated by Issa J. Boullata
Novel
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 Story of Zahra [Hikayat Zahrah]
Hanan el-Sheikh english ed. translated by Peter Ford
Novel
Doubleday; arabic ed. Dar al-Adab; 1996, 1990
Novel, illuminating the personal human tragedy of war and madness. |
The Thistle and the Cedar of Lebanon
Effendi Hebeeb Rizkallah
Memory, Identity, Society
Garnet Publishing (The Folios Archive Library) 2001
An outsider's perspective of Lebanon; 'From pirates, belles and balls to the status of women and the role of health care in society'. |
The Tragedy of Lebanon: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventurers, and American Bunglers (La Guerre de mille ans : Jusqu'au dernier chrétien, jusqu'au dernier marchand, la tragédie du Liban)
Jonathan Randal
History Analysis
Just World Books (english); Grasset (french) 2012 (first publ. 1983); 1984
The author analyses the complex politics of the Lebanese civil war and their ongoing effect on the region's politics, focusing on the rightwing Christian militias at the beginning of the civil conflict, including the bombing of the U.S. Marines' barracks and the simultaneous attack against a French barracks in Beirut in 1983, and adding in this 2012 reissue a new preface on the meaning of those events, then and today. |
The Vanished Imam: Musa al-Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon
Fouad Ajami
History Analysis
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press 1986
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. |
The War for Lebanon: 1970-1985
Itamar Rabinovich
History Analysis
Cornell University Press 1984
An analysis of the 'interplay between Lebanon's domestic politics and developments in the larger Middle East' from 1970 to 1985, as 'a conflict of domestic and external forces seeking to shape and control the Lebanese entity': the collapse of the Lebanese political system between 1970 & 1975; the civil war of 1975-76; the lingering crisis of the years 1976-82; the war of 1982. |
