BAYRUT 2002
Renee Al-Hayek
Novel
Al-Markaz Al-Thakafy Al-Arabi 2003
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. |
BAYRUT WA NAHR AL-KHIYANAT
Mohammad Ali Al-Yusufy
Novel
Dar Al-Farabi 2002
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. |
Beirut Blues [Barid Bayrut - Poste Restante: Beyrouth]
Hanan el-Sheikh
Novel
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. |
Beirut Nightmares [Kawabis Bayrut]
Ghada Samman
Novel
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. |
Berytus, une ville sous terre
Rabee Jaber
Novel
Gallimard 2009
A novel about a man who discovered a city hidden under Beirut and settled there, haunted by memories of an absurd conflict. He ends up resurfacing but decides to keep the underground city a secret… |
Beyrouth au Coeur
Nadia Khouri-Dagher
Novel
L'Harmattan 1999
A emotional account of every day life in post-war Lebanon. |
Beyrouth Catharsis
Zeina Abirached
Novel
Cambourakis 2006
A story of a childhood in Lebanon in the 1980s through the words and angle of view of a little girl to whom war is close yet almost invisible, only “apparent” through distant sounds of explosions. |
Beyrouth ne pardonne pas
Carol Ajami Preface by Pierre-Jean Remy
Novel
Dar An-Nahar 2004
This book tells about Lebanon and France, about silence after a war, rumor inside hearts, and the sound of fury in the lives of those like us. |
Beyrouth ou La Fascination de la Mort
Issa Makhlouf
Novel
Passion 1988, 1998
An overwhelming account of life in Lebanon; the derisory and inhuman nature of events. |
Binayat Mathilde [The house of Mathilde] [L'Immeuble de Mathilde]
Hassan Daoud
Novel
arabic ed. Dar al-Tanwir; english ed. translated by Peter Theroux, Granta; french ed. translated by Youssef Seddik, Actes-Sud/Sindbad; 1983, 1998, 1998
The House of Mathilde, where all the events are almost a copy and an effect of the events of war happening all over Lebanon. |
Blueprint for a Prophet
Carl Gibeily
Novel
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' |
Byretus madinat taht al-ard (Byretus Underground City)
Rabee Jaber
Novel
Al-Markaz al-Thaqafi al-Arabi 2005
A novel about a man who discovered a city hidden under Beirut and settled there, haunted by memories of an absurd conflict. He ends up resurfacing but decides to keep the underground city a secret… |
Caravansérail
Charif Majdalani
Novel
Seuil 2007
A novel set in the early 20th century, relating the adventures of a Lebanese young man, crossing the Nile, Arabia and Syria with his caravan until he reaches the snows of Mount Lebanon. |
Carnaval
Rawi Hage
Novel
Sharikat al-Matbu‘at publ. 2014
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. |
Carnival
Rawi Hage
Novel
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. |
Carnival city
Rawi Hage
Novel
Denoël 2014
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. |
Cent quatre-vingts crepuscules
Hassan Daoud
Novel
Actes-Sud 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. |
Cerf-volant
Dominique Eddé
Novel
Gallimard 2003
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. |
Cher Monsieur Kawabata [Dear Mr Kawabata - Azizi al-Sayyid Kawabata]
Rashid al-Daif
Novel
french ed. translated by Yves Gonzalez-Quijano, Actes Sud coll. Sindbad; arabic ed. Mokhtarat, 2nd ed. Riad el-Rayyes; english ed. translated by Paul 1998
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. |
Cockroach
Rawi Hage
Novel
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. |
Comme si elle dormait
Elias Khoury
Novel
Actes-Sud 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. |
Contes et Nouvelles du Liban
Edouard Azouri
Novel
Librairie Orientale 1999
Poetry, literature, and thoughts about the life of the Lebanese people. |
Coquelicot du Massacre
Evelyne Accad
Novel
L'Harmattan 1988
This novel is about the war in Lebanon and is accompanied by a cassette of songs she wrote and performed. |
Crescent
Diana Abu-Jaber
Novel
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. |
D'Autres Images Ecrites
Nada Moghaizel Nasr
Novel
Dar An-Nahar 1999
Second work by Nada Moghaizel Nasr on images written on childhood, mothers, people . . in Lebanon. |
Damour, Man Anti
Farid Gharib, Michel Gharib
Novel
World book publishing 1978
Damour until January 19th, 1976: date of the massacre perpetrated by Palestinians against the Lebanese civilians. |
Da’iman Coca-Cola
Alexandra Chreiteh
Novel
Arab Scientific Publ. 2009
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. |
De Niro's Game
Rawi Hage
Novel
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. |
De Niro’s Game
Rawi Hage
Novel
Éditions Denoël 2008
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. |
Dear Mr Kawabata [Azizi al-Sayyid Kawabata - Cher Monsieur Kawabata]
Rashid al-Daif
Novel
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. |
Death in Beirut
Tawfiq Yusuf Awwad
Novel
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. |
Dent d'Amour
Therese Aouad Basbous
Novel
L'Harmattan 1999
Pursuing what slips away from the touch of the words that are so dampened and dissolved in the life of 'others'. |
Derrière les Visages
Andree Chedid
Novel
Flammarion (Castor poche); (9 stories from "Les corps et le temps" published in 1978 by Ed. Flammarion + unpublished story); 1984
Nine short stories, most of them located in Egypt and in Lebanon, aiming to tell about the human heart that knows no boundaries and no frontiers. |
Des jours en trop [Ayyam Za'idat]
Hassan Daoud
Novel
french ed. translated by Edwige Lambert, Actes-Sud/Sindbad; arabic ed. Dar al Jadeed, 2 editions; 1998, 1990, 2000
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. |
Des Mots et des Hommes
Therese Aouad Basbous
Novel
L'Harmattan 2000
Reconstitution with words of an almost vanished past, of a moving experience that took place. |
Dreams Of Water
Nada Awar Jarrar
Novel
HarperCollins Publ. 2007
Only when a young man disappears does his worried family understand the deep bond of love that ties their family together. |
Dunya
Alawiyya Sobh
Novel
Dar al-Adab 2006
In this novel, the author shows how the civil war separated many, but also cancelled the distances between the different classes, through a story depicting human desires, fears, and lust. |
Durooz Belghrad (The Druze of Belgrade)
Rabee Jaber
Novel
Al-Markaz al-Thaqafi al-Arabi 2010
This novel tells the story of the Druze fighters forced to leave after the 1860 civil war in Mount Lebanon and go to the fortress of Belgrade, and who took along with them a Chrisitian man in exchange for the freedom of a fellow fighter. |
D’autres vies
Iman Humaydan Younes
Novel
Verticales 2012
This novel shows the impact of war and violence on those who live them, and on the meaning of life itself, especially for women. |
Equinoxe d’automne
Jabbour Douaihy
Novel
AMAM 2000
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. |
Fatin
Fatima Sharafeddine
Novel
Kalimat 2010
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. |
Femmes de sable et de myrrhe
Hanan el-Sheikh
Novel
Actes-Sud 1993
The author relates the hard life of four women in an unnamed desert state. |
Fushat Mustahdafa bayn al-Na'as wal-Nawm [Passage to Dusk - Passage au Crépuscule]
Rashid al-Daif
Novel
arabic ed. Dar Mokhtarat; english ed. University of Texas Press; french ed. Actes Sud; 1986, 2001, 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. |
Ghaflat al-Tourab
Rashid al-Daif
Novel
Dar Moukhtarat 1991
Foreign countries want to send us boats to 'save' us out of Lebanon. Are we invaders in our own country? |
Ghareeqat buhayrat Moreh (Drowning in Lake Morez)
Antoine al-Duwaihi
Novel
Arab Scientific Publ. 2014
A Lebanese man and a French woman struggle to make their relationship work, despite the culture and the space separating them, in a novel showing how people, today, are often caught between different worlds. |
Ghina’ al-bitreeq
Hassan Daoud
Novel
Dar al-Saqi 2003
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. |
Haddithni ‘an al-Khiam
Fatin al-Murr
Novel
Dar al-Adab 2013
The joys, pains, disappointments and martyrs of a family living in the town of Khiam in South Lebanon, from the 1978 massacre to the liberation in 2000. |
Hadeeqat al-fajr (The Garden of Dawn)
Antoine al-Duwaihi
Novel
Dar al-Nahar 1999
Texts mirroring the author’s feelings in relation to reactions, thoughts and ideas on time, the body, women, cities, love…. |
Hajar al-Dahik [The Stone of Laughter - La Pierre du Rire]
Hoda Barakat
Novel
arabic ed. Riad el-Rayyess; english ed. translated by Sophie Bennett, interlinks books; french ed. Actes Sud;
The suffering brought by the Lebanese war shows through the behaviors of the characters of this novel. |
Hamil al-warda al-urjuwaniyya (The Bearer of the Purple Rose)
Antoine al-Duwaihi
Novel
Arab Scientific Publ. 2013
A writer is arrested and imprisoned in “The Citadel of the Port” upon his return from a long exile in the West… and starts meditating on memories from his exile; love; his mother; the destruction of nature; history’s tragedy; strange fate, time and death. |
