Haqa’ib al-dhakira (Suitcases of Memory)
Sharbel Qatan
Novel
Nawfal publ 2011
A novel built around five suitcases abandoned at the Beirut airport, each telling a story related to an aspect of contemporary Lebanon, and bags whose owners are unknown… Until Ehab, who lost his father at the beginning of the civil war arrives at the customs department… |
Harith al Miyah [Le Laboureur des Eaux]
Hoda Barakat
Novel
arabic ed. Dar An-Nahar; french ed. Actes Sud; 1998, 1999
Sensual and strong epic in the ruins of a memory-city. Through the journey of Nicolas, the principal character of this novel, the reader scrapes off the dust and rediscovers the city from before the nothingness. |
Hayat Qaseera (A Short Life)
Renée Hayek
Novel
Al-Markaz al-Thaqafi al-Arabi 2011
The author gives an account of life during the civil war in Lebanon, describing the difficulties of daily life and the dangers of travelling across the country, portraying the impact of war on social life, realtionships with family or friends, those who stayed in Lebanon and those who went to live abroad. |
Hayawat ukhra
Iman Humaydan Younes
Novel
Dar al-Rawi 2011
This novel shows the impact of war and violence on those who live them, and on the meaning of life itself, especially for women. |
HAYY Al-LIJA
Balkis Al-Houmani
Novel
Al-Sharikat Al-Aalamiyat Lil Kitab, 1996
A novel detailing the life of refugees from the South in Beirut. |
Hikayat Zahrah [The Story of Zahra]
Hanan el-Sheikh
Novel
arabic ed. Dar al-Adab; english ed. translated by Peter Ford, Doubleday; 1990, 1996
Novel, illuminating the personal human tragedy of war and madness. |
Histoire de la grande maison
Charif Majdalani
Novel
Seuil 2005
This novel, set in Lebanon from the Ottoman empire up to the French mandate, tells the story of a man who, after fleeing his native village in late 19th century Lebanon, creates an empire close to Beirut until, as a consequence of WW1, illness, and the pranks of one of his sons, his empire collapses and his descendants gradually leave Lebanon. |
Homesick
Tony Hanania
Novel
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. |
I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops [Aknus Al-Shams Aan Al-Sutuh]
Hanan el-Sheikh
Novel
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. |
I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters
Rabih Alameddine
Novel
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. |
Images Ecrites
Nada Moghaizel Nasr
Novel
FMA 1994
Images written on childhood, mothers, people ... in Lebanon. |
Immortalis
Elias Jabre
Novel
Ed. du Masque 2004
Science Fiction novel telling the story of a modern alchemist, a genetics expert who found the formula for man to be eternal… The anguish of death will be replaced by absolute perplexity, but most will sign for such a life-contract… |
Improvisations on a Missing String
Nazik Saba Yared translated by Stuart A. Hancox
Novel
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. |
In the Middle of Nowhere
Ibrahim Yared
Novel
Saqi Books 2001
A novel depicting the struggle to belong of immigrants who left their country because of the civil war. |
INSY AL-SIYYARA
Rashid Al-Daif
Novel
Riad el-Rayyes books 2002
The story of a 35 years’ old man whose father decides to marry again after he is widowed. His attempts to stop this wedding with the help of his girlfriend. A novel told on a backgroung of regretting the period of the Lebanese Civil War when people could get rich easily and fast. Also describing the relationship between the Lebanese –those living in Lebanon and those living in the USA- with the Americans. |
Ismahu al-gharam (It's Called Love)
Alawiyya Sobh
Novel
Dar al-Adab 2009
This novel consists of a sensitive and sensuous story of a middle-aged woman assessing her love life, and follows characters whose lives illustrate the struggles of war and invasion experienced by the Lebanese people. |
I‘tidal al-khareef
Jabbour Douaihy
Novel
Dar al-Nahar 1995
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. |
Jasmine and Fire: A Bittersweet Year in Beirut
Salma Abdelnour
Novel
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. |
June Rain
Jabbour Douaihy
Novel
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. |
Ka-annaha na’ima
Elias Khoury
Novel
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. |
Karizma (Charisma)
Hala Kawtharani
Novel
Dar al-Saqi 2013
The story of three women from different eras whose lives have in common hope and pain. |
Kawabis Bayrut [Beirut Nightmares]
Ghada Samman
Novel
arabic ed. Dar al-Taliaat; english ed. translated by Nancy N. Roberts, Quartet Books; 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. |
Khatt Al Fazaa
Idriss Bilmalih
Novel
World Book Publishing 1998
The Lebanese post-war society. |
Khawaja
Mohammed Taan
Novel
L'Harmattan (Ecritures Arabes) 2002
During the 1980s in Lebanon when inter-sectarian conflict reached its peak; in a Beirut shelter, the Khawaja, a strange old man who is attempting everything to get his home back, tells a doctor he met and developed friendship towards the sacred task destiny entrusted him with and that war is threatening. |
Khiam
Alexandre Najjar
Novel
Dar An-Nahar 2000
A tribute to those who survided the hell of the Israeli sinister prison located in Lebanon. |
Khoubzouna l'Yawmi
Emily Nasrallah
Novel
Naufal Group 1990
A poignant image of man's suffering during the war. |
Kitab al-hala (The Book of the Current State)
Antoine al-Duwaihi
Novel
Dar al-Nahar 1993
The author creates a new style combining poetry and prose inducing vision, dreams, and meditation. |
Kite
Dominique Edde
Novel
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. |
Koolaids: The Art of War
Rabih Alameddine
Novel
Picador Press 1998
Detailing the impact of the AIDS epidemic and the Lebanese civil war in Beirut on a circle of friends and family. |
L'Amour loup
Anouar Benmalek
Novel
Pauvert 2002
The tragic love story, in Lebanon during the israeli/palestinian conflict in the eighties, between a Algerian future engineer and a Palestian Medical student. |
L'armoire des ombres
Hyam Yared
Novel
Sabine Wespieser 2006
Through the story of an actress who discovers folded shadows in a closet in a theatre in Beirut, and uses them as different characters in plays she presents to an ever-growing audience until she is lost within all her different identities, the author portrays the Lebanese society where individuals have no place, women in particular… and where any attempt towards emancipation is very dearly paid. |
L'armoire des ombres
Hyam Schoucair Yared
Novel
Ed. Sabine Wespieser 2006
This novel portraying a country that has fallen prey to war and religious conservatism tells the story of a person who assumes the role of two Lebanese women on a theatre stage, thus leading to an increasingly blurred boundary between reality and fiction. |
L'Autre
Andree Chedid
Novel
Flammarion (Fiction Française) 1992 (1st ed. 1969)
This novel tells about the fight against death through the story of a man who struggles to save an other man. The complicity between an old oriental man with a heart like a child's, and a young westerner as blasé as an old man illustrating a dialogue between two different civilizations. |
L'Ecole de la Guerre
Alexandre Najjar
Novel
Balland 1999
After 7 years of absence, the narrator comes back to Beirut and remembers events of the war: tragic and comical ones, others atrocious and moving. |
L'Enfant du Liban - Les Chemins de Nulle Part [The Roads to Nowhere, a Child of Lebanon]
Mansour Labaky
Novel
french ed. Fayard; english ed. St Bede's Publications; 1986, 1987
The story of a Lebanese child who became an orphan because of the war, his friendship with another boy and his path towards 'a life of love and forgiveness' |
L'Enfant et la Ville
Georges N. Rubeiz
Novel
Dar An-Nahar 1996
Beirut, beautiful and carefree before the war; disfigured and petrified in its military uniform, after the war. |
L'Enfant Multiple
Andree Chedid
Novel
Librio 1999
The story of a child born in Lebanon, wounded the'absurd civil war' and by the death of his parents. And who will discover peace and hope through his friendship with thedifferent excentric characters of this book. |
L'éxcisée [The Excised]
Ezza Agha Malak
Novel
L'Harmattan (french); Three Continents Press (english) 1982, 1989
Through the story of an Arab Christian woman who elopes with a Muslim man, the author portrays the oppression Arab women today, and notably female circumcision. |
L'Homme Assis
Selim Nassib
Novel
Balland 1991
An account by the Lebanese journalist Selim Nassib: Fourteen stories that tell about the mentality and the customs in the Middle East and the repetitive conflicts devastating this region. |
L'Occidentaliste
Hani Hammoud
Novel
Dar An-Nahar 1997
Revolt and disgust behind a feigned indifference. |
L'Ombre d'une Ville
Elie-Pierre Sabbag
Novel
Buchet Chastel 1994
After the Lebanese Civil War, Athanase, the narrator, revives the past and the memory of this conflict through telling his story with his circle of friends to a young Lebanese immigrant, the daughter of one of these friends who committed suicide. |
La Belle Sunamite
Lutfallah Manasseh
Novel
Dar An-Nahar 2003
The author tells the story of the beautiful Abishag who, after being close to King David, was coveted by his son Adonias who wanted to affirm his right to the throne by marrying the concubine of the deceased king… A hard task for the author considering the difficulty of overcoming the prejudgments often aroused by the Old Testament where unraveling myths and facts is so complicated. |
La dernière des Croisés
Ezza Agha Malak
Novel
1st ed.: Maison Internationale du Livre, Beyrouth; 2nd ed.: Editions des Ecrivains, Paris 1997, 2002
The story of an expatriate Lebanese, her difficult life, her absurd existence and her wish for freedom, justice, reconstruction, participation, communication, and eternity. |
La dernière des croisés : Esclavagisme et Enfance
Ezza Agha Malak
Novel
1998
The story of a 9 years' old little girl in the cruel city of Tripoli. |
La Femme de mon mari
Ezza Agha Malak
Novel
2001
A lively image of Lebanese life based on real historical facts that occurred in the city of Tripoli where a revolution and civil war were happening in 1958. |
La Honte du Survivant<br>Le Ciel n'est Jamais l'Ennemi
Alexandre Najjar
Novel
ed. Naaman (2nd ed.) 1991
Two stories that testify about the war in lebanon: the first one is about the fiendship between a Lebanese combattant and a French journalist in a military camp; the second one tells the tragedy of a young university student whose life changed the day he was wounded by shrapnels. |
La Maison sans racines [The Return to Beirut]
Andree Chedid
Novel
french ed. Flammarion (Vieux Fonds); english ed. translated by Ros Schwartz, Serpents Tail; 1990, 1985
Lebanon -unhappily scarred by poverty, and hostility between Christian and Moslem factions- through 5 generations of a Lebanese family -those who emigrated and those who remained in their homeland- at three different times. |
La malédiction
Hyam Schoucair Yared
Novel
Ed. des Equateurs 2012
A novel about Lebanon and its situation, conflicts, and religions, tells the story of young Hala, her childhood, bulimia, anorexia, suspicious friendship, self-effacement, and her struggle against her strict mother and strict male society. |
La Mallette
Ezza Agha Malak
Novel
Jarrous Tripoli 1996
The life of post-war human society. |
La Mémoire des Cèdres
Jacqueline Massabki, François Porel
Novel
Robert Laffont 1989
The Lebanese Civil War that ravaged the country but also divided members of a same family. |
