- Māzin Ḥaydar (?, Lebanon) – Fūr Stībs Dāwn (‘Four Steps Down’, 2017). Rājī, a Lebanese architect who fled to Paris during the Lebanese Civil War, returns to Beirut. He visits the streets and buildings in the city where he and his friends used to live and spend time in to observe the damage by war. In this process of rediscovering his old habitat the reshaping of memories plays an important role. Just as the physical remainders of his past life are demolished, so too does the protagonist feel he must rid of his memories because they only hurt him reminding him of a life that will not return (reference).
- Amin Maalouf (1949-, Lebanon) – Les Desorientés (2013, English trans. The Disoriented, 2021). After fleeing the civil war in his country (an unknown country similar to Lebanon) and settling in Paris, Adam returns to his homeland to see his dying friend Murad and to arrange a reunion with his old friends. This reunion leads him “to discover the extent to which their common aspirations, political visions and revolutionary dreams have been shattered” (reference). Each of his friends had, after the end of the civil war, ascribed to different ideologies and religions, something that reflects the chaotic condition of their country and the region (also in M: Movement: (E)Migration, Refugees and Return: Return).
- Imīlī Naṣrallah (1931 – 2018, Lebanon) – al-Ilqāʿ ʿAks al-Zamān (1980, English trans. Flight Against Time, 1987). Staring at the offset of Lebanon’s Civil War in 1975, an elderly couple, the main character Radwān and his wife, travel to Canada to visit their children and grandchildren, but stay after his wife decides to (see further description in W: Outside the Arab World: Americas: Canada).
- Rabīʿa Jābir (1972-, Lebanon) – Rālf Rizqallāh fī al-Mirʾāt (‘Ralf Rizqallah through the Looking Glass’, 1997). This novel, on the feelings of Lebanon’s inhabitants after the Civil War, according to some critics treats the suicide of Ralf Rizqallah as a social and psychological state triggered by a failed collective mourning process of the Civil War (reference). Others see the story as a research on the real-time suicide of one of Lebanon’s famous intellectuals and the eventual description of his suicide as neither an act of protest nor a post-war symptom, but rather caused by personal alienation, physical ailments, and a nihilistic perception of the role of the intellectual (reference) (also in D: Death: Suicide).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Lazīq, Ḥassan. 2017. “Riwāyat ‘Fūr Stips Dāwn’ li-Māzin Ḥaydar Darajāt Arbʿa fī ʿUmq Dhākirah Bayrūt.” www.annahar.com, 23 February 2017, https://www.annahar.com/arabic/article/527475-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%81%D9%88%D8%B1-%D8%B3%D8%AA%D8%A8%D8%B3-%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%88%D9%86-%D9%84%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B2%D9%86-%D8%AD%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%B1-%D8%AF%D8%B1%D8%AC%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A3%D8%B1%D8%A8%D8%B9-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%B9%D9%85%D9%82-%D8%B0%D8%A7%D9%83%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%AA (last accessed 11 November 2021)
- Hanan Ibrahim. 2018. “The question of Arab ‘identity’ in Amin Maalouf’s ‘Les Desorientés’.” Journal of Postcolonial writing 54(6): 835-847, p. 836
- Dalia Said Mostafa. 2009. “Literary Representations of Trauma, Memory, and Identity in the Novels of Elias Khoury and RabīʿJābir.” JAL 42: 208-236
- Zeina G. Halabi. 2013. “The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: Suicide of the Intellectual in RabīʿJābir’sRālfRizqallāh through the Looking Glass.” JAL 44: 53-82