La Mue
Georges Corm
Novel
ed. No‘l Blandin 1992
The story of a country deceived, betrayed, cut up, by stronger countries, but with the enthusiastic complicity of its own countrymen, blinded by their passions, greedy for violence, searching for their salvation through the craziest self-destruction and unable to understand their collective suicide. |
La Pierre du Rire [Hajar al-Dahik - The Stone of Laughter]
Hoda Barakat
Novel
french ed. Actes Sud; arabic ed. Riad el-Rayyess; english ed. translated by Sophie Bennett, interlinks books;
The suffering brought by the Lebanese war shows through the behaviors of the characters of this novel. |
La Porte du soleil [Bab al-Shams]
Elias Khoury translated by Rania Samara
Novel
french ed. Actes Sud; arabic ed. Dar al-Adab; 2002, 1998
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. |
La Promise
Nohad Salameh
Novel
L'Harmattan 1999
The memory of yesteryear's Lebanon, now devastated by the war. |
La Vision
Jean Salme
Novel
Ed. Jean Salme 2003
This novel that takes place in Beirut is about the eternal love of a man for a woman he never ended up marrying because of particular circumstances. |
Lady Virus
Alexandre Najjar
Novel
Balland 2002
An espionage thriller dealing with terrorism: After letters containing anthrax contaminated people all over the U.S.A., Meg, a renowned microbiologist hired by the CIA, conducts an investigation taking her from New York to Amman to Amsterdam to Beirut, on the trail of "Lady Virus", the woman responsible for the Iraqi bacterial program. |
Le Berceau du monde : Orient - Opéra
Fady Stephan
Novel
Verticales (Littérature française) 2003
The author, an Archeology and East-Semitic languages teacher, leads the reader through a lyrical and poetic journey in Lebanon describing it as a land of mythical legends as well as a land that welcomed people of all religions, of different beliefs and philosophical sects and where people hoped unity and reconciliation were possible. |
Le bonheur à la queue glissante
Abla Farhoud
Novel
L'Hexagone 1998
The story of an illiterate Lebanese immigrant and of her solitude; who gradually lets the reader inside her memory. |
Le bus des gens biens
Najwa Barakat
Novel
Stock (coll. La Cosmopolite) 2002
In the deserted square of a city in the North of the Arabic peninsula, an old bus with a dozen strange passengers, a strange driver, starts a journey in the miidle of the night which encourages telling secrets . . and lies. |
Le cafard
Rawi Hage
Novel
Éditions Denoël 2010
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. |
Le chant du pingouin
Hassan Daoud
Novel
Actes-Sud 2007
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. |
Le chant suspendu
Elham Chamoun Abdelnour
Novel
Dar Malaffat 2009
A love story set in the Lebanese mountains. |
Le cimetière des rêves
Hanan el-Sheikh
Novel
Actes Sud (Babel) 2002
Stories about Arab women, whether they are Moroccan or Lebanese or Yemenite, who affirm their independence. |
Le coffre des secrets
Elias Khoury
Novel
Actes-Sud 2009
The narrator tells the stories of two men and one woman, their crossing destinies, in Lebanon and in Columbia, in between the 1860 civil war and the 1975 civil war. |
Le couvent de la Lune ou Deir el-Kamar à travers le temps
Carole Dagher
Novel
Plon 2002
A flash-back on 19th century Lebanon, under Béchir II Chéhab - a period rich with events, intrigues, military prouesses, and friendship and loyalty-, through this historical and sentimental novel. |
Le Laboureur des Eaux [Harith al Miyah]
Hoda Barakat
Novel
french ed. Actes Sud; arabic ed. Dar An-Nahar; 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. |
Le Message
Andree Chedid
Novel
Flammarion (Fiction Française) 2000
In war-torn Beirut, Marie is shot on her way to meet her lover. She still finds the strength to write him a note telling him "I was coming" and give it to an old woman, Anya. Gorgio, a repentant ex-sniper promises to get an ambulance. Each of the characters becomes a gardian of love in this land of massacre and hatred. |
Le Moine, l'Ottoman et la Femme de l’Argentier
Venus Khoury-Ghata
Novel
Actes Sud 2003
During the 18th century, a young inexperienced monk falls in love with a woman he was supposed to bring back to her husband after she ran away with an Ottoman lord, and discovers Islam during his journey. |
Le Prince des Cyniques
Ramzi T. Salameh
Novel
FMA/Buchet Chastel 1999
The Lebanese as they are, sell-outs, greedy for power, obsessed with profit, and incapable of remembering lessons of the past. |
Le Roman de Beyrouth
Alexandre Najjar
Novel
Plon 2005
Through this story of three generation of a Lebanese family, the author recounts the history of Beirut and its struggle. |
Le Système Boone
Percy Kemp
Novel
Albin Michel 2002
The story of the battle of a "Club House" -Her Majesty's Secret Service- agent to preserve his quiet way of life on the shores of the Mediterranean, a pleasant life disturbed by the anti-terrorist battle.
This book sheds light on the secrets and behind the scenes, the rivalries and manipulations dominating the life of double agents and spies. |
Learning English
Rashid al-Daif
Novel
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. |
Learning English
Rashid al-Daif
Novel
Actes-Sud 2001
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. |
Leaving Beirut, Women and the Wars Within
Mai Ghoussoub
Novel
Saqi Books 1997
The author describes her youth and the civil war in Lebanon in a plea for cultural diversity. |
Lernin Inglish
Rashid al-Daif
Novel
Al-Nahar; Riad El-Rayyes 1998, 2005
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. |
Les Broussailles
Nadim Takieddine
Novel
Dar An-Nahar 2000
Aphorisms in French and Arabic. |
Les carnets d’Urbain de Valsère
Gerard Khoury
Novel
Dar An-Nahar, Geuthner, 2003
This novel, a mix of facts and fiction, starts with the true story of the author finding 27 unsigned beautiful drawings in an antiques store in the 80s. He identified the locations and the period, thus discovering the importance of these documents relatively to the French-Lebanese relations. |
Les Druzes de Belgrade
Rabee Jaber
Novel
Gallimard 2015
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. |
Les Echelles du Levant
Amin Maalouf
Novel
LGF (Le Livre de Poche) 1998
Through the story of man, son of a turkish ottoman father and of an armenian mother exiled in Lebanon, and his relationship with a clandestine jewish girl, the author illustrates the dream of a peaceful non-sectarian Lebanon. |
Les Enfants de la louve
Georges N. Rubeiz
Novel
FMA 2001
Through this apparently light humorous novel, the author tells about the historical, socio-political and cultural aspects defining the lebanese identity. |
Les Identités Meurtrières
Amin Maalouf
Novel
Grasset 1998
An analysis of our present societies and the necessity to redefine identity; its present definition being the cause of massacres. |
Les Illuminés [Ahl al'Hawa]
Hoda Barakat
Novel
french ed. translated by François Zabbal, Actes Sud; arabic ed. Dar An-Nahar; 1999, 1993
The main character of this novel is crippled and tries to find the reasons for his handicap in the war. |
Les Livres d'Anne
Laurice Schehadeh
Novel
Dar An-Nahar 1999
Childhood, time flying away, and love. |
Les Moi Volatils des Guerres Perdues
Ghassan Fawaz
Novel
Seuil 1996
Reality and imagination, History and fiction. |
Les moulins de Beyrouth
Tawfiq Yusuf Awwad
Novel
Actes-Sud 2012
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. |
Les portes de la nuit
Ezza Agha Malak
Novel
Editions des écrivains 1999
Myriam, a very intuitive young woman who also has premonitory dreams, meets, in real life, with the man she had been dreaming about repetitively. |
Les Saisons de passage
Andree Chedid
Novel
Flammarion (Documents) 1996
In 80 short texts, the author describes her mother throughout various places and times. Memories combining reality and fiction. |
Lettre Posthume
Dominique Edde
Novel
Gallimard 1989
The story takes place a short while before the fightings between Christians which destroyed, beginning 1989 and in a short period of time, the East part of Beirut. |
Liban, écrits nomades - Volume 1
Yves Laplace, Robert Marinier, Jean-Yves Picq, Koffi Kwahulé
Novel
Carnières 2001
Plays and stories, related directly and indirectly to Beirut, by nine authors and a photographer from 3 continents inspired by their one month stay in the city of Byblos in Lebanon. |
Liban, écrits nomades - Volume 2
Joseph Kodeih, Mohamed Kacimi, Florent Couao-Zotti
Novel
Carnières 2001
Plays and stories, related directly and indirectly to Beirut, by nine authors and a photographer from 3 continents inspired by their one month stay in the city of Byblos in Lebanon. |
Londres, Mon Amour
Hanan el-Sheikh translated by Rania Samara
Novel
Actes Sud 2002
Lamis -a young and beautiful Iraki woman who's just divorced-, Amira -a moroccan prostitute pretending she's a princess from the Gulf-, Samir -a Lebanese transvestite-, and Nicholas -an oriental antiques expert who works for Sotheby's-; all four arrive to London at the same time.
This novel is about their lives in cosmopolitan London where so many different people are. |
Lubnaniyoun fi al-Mansa
Adel Sawma
Novel
Dar Al-Farabi 1997
This book -that seems to insist on not forgetting- is a collection of stories about characters in Lebanon during the civil war period, 1975-1990, the 'forgotten' who lived the war and paid the price with their lives, time and dreams. |
Lu‘bat de Niro
Rawi Hage
Novel
Sharikat al-Matbu‘at publ. 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. |
Majma‘ al-asrar
Elias Khoury
Novel
Dar al-Adab 1994
The narrator tells the stories of two men and one woman, their crossing destinies, in Lebanon and in Columbia, in between the 1860 civil war and the 1975 civil war. |
MAKIAJ KHAFEEF LI HATHIHI AL-LAYLA
Hassan Daoud
Novel
Riad el-Rayyes Books 2003
"The make-up I put that evening, I needed it to be thick to cover the marks that did not disappear from my cheeks or from around my eyes, and very colorful, because I had lost my original color. The lady employees of the company had started encouraging me to use make-up, telling me that make-up suits no one as much as it suits me. Because my skin is pale, as they said, and my eyelashes need kohl to enlighten my eyes.
In his house, walking through his belongings that are not where they should be, I realized how tidy and bright I was. I walked ahead of him, but, while he was walking behind me, I was as if moving following my instinct to where he was going." |
Mamlakat al Gouraba [The Kingdom of Strangers]
Elias Khoury
Novel
arabic ed. Dar al-Adab; english ed. Univ. of Arkansas Press; 1993, 1996
A novel about Lebanon besieged by civil war; a mosaic portrayal showing the chaos and despair suffered by its people. |
Maria Aparecida
Yasmina Traboulsi
Novel
Mercure de France 2002
A liveky image of Bahia that can be mistaken for an image of Beirut, with its dust, misery and opulence through 14 short stories depicting the strength and incredible mystery of absence. |
Marie-Luce Bruyère, ou la vie d'un étudiant en France
Georges Saad
Novel
Atelier de création libertaire 2002
The life of a Lebanese student in Paris, and his love story with Marie. |
Mariée à Paris… Répudiée à Beyrouth
Ezza Agha Malak
Novel
L'Harmattan 2009
After living in France where she enjoyed the rights of a French wife and mother, the hero of this novel goes back to her native country, Lebanon, where she falls under the “law” of the patriarchal and machist society in her muslim community. |
MARYAM AL-HAKAYA
Alawiyya Al-Solh
Novel
Dar Al-Adab 2002
Different stories told to Maryam by members of a Shi’ite community that had to leave South-Lebanon to come and work in Beirut; highlighting aspects of their life which others outside the community would consider as shameful and unthinkable considering the oriental standards, beliefs and taboos, but that are current in this community. |
