- Zeina Abirached (1981-, Lebanon) graphic novel le Jeu des Hirondelles (‘the game of swallows’, 2007) describes the author’s childhood during the Lebanese Civil War.
- Etel Adnan (1925-, Lebanon) – Sitt Marie Rose (1978), in which the writer recounts the story of Marie Rose, a woman whose staunch commitment to the Palestinian cause and to social justice leads to her torture and execution by a right-wing Christian militia at outset of the Lebanese Civil War. Highlighting the militiamen’s discomfort with Marie Rose’s romantic involvement with a Palestinian man and her defiance in the face of their demands, the novel explores the interconnections among political, interpersonal, and structural violence and their detrimental impact on women’s lives (reference).
- Ṣuhayb Ayyūb (1989-, Lebanon) – Rajul min Sātān (‘Man of satin’, 2019). A novel about three generations from one Lebanese family. An important role is given to the women in the family who take care of the men and have everything under control (reference). The grandmother ʿAyyūsh for example, protects the family in times of crisis. Furthermore, the neighbor ʿAlyā makes sure that the grandson of the family, Nabīl, finds his escape from the war by helping her in her sowing work. The story of the family equally portrays the story of the city before, during and after the Civil War.
- Hudā Barakāt (1952-, Lebanon) – Ḥajar al-Ḍaḥk (1990, English trans. Stone of Laughter, 1995) and Ḥārath al-Miyāh (1998, English Trans. The Tiller of Waters, 2004).
Ḥajar al-Ḍaḥk is set during the Lebanese Civil War and portrays the homosexual Khalīl, who’s feminine non-conformity does not resonate with the war’s patriarchal definitions of masculinity dominated by aggression and violence. Therefore, he pretends it does not exist, separating the war-dominated public sphere from his little apartment which he obsessively keeps neat and tidy (reference). However, this all changes when he loses two of his lovers. He undergoes a transformation joining the Lebanese warlords and becoming a stereotypical man: to avoid being the victim he must be the aggressor. Hate becomes Khalīl’s credo and drives him to preforming the ultimate act of male sexual violence: rape (reference) (L: Love, Lust, and Relationships: LGBTQ+: Male Homosexuality).
Set in a destroyed Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, Ḥārath al-Miyāh narrates the story of Niqūla Mitri, a fabric tradesman suffering from hallucinations, and his beloved Shamsah, a Kurdish maid. As he struggles to adapt to the new reality surrounding him, he sees the world through the code of cloth: from the intimacy of linen to the most impersonal of synthetics, allowing him to weave his life story with thousands of years of the human relationship with fabric. This novel won the Naguib Mahfouz price for literature in the year 2004 (also in O: Occupations, Professions and Hobbies: Fabrics).
- Jabbūr Duwayhī’s (1949 – 2021, Lebanon) ʿAyn Wardah (‘Rose fountain’, 2002) and Sharīd al-Manāzil (2010, English trans. Firefly, 2022).
In ʿAyn Wardah, the family house of the deep-rooted, bourgeois Lebanese Maronite family of Āl al-Bāz is deployed as a metaphor of an unstable and decaying homeland which has lost its familiarity and grandeur and is gradually being taken over by outsiders, represented by Āl Ḥāmid Khuḍr al-Māniʿ, a family of Lebanese Bedouins (reference). The family members’ estrangement from each other coincides with the escalating Lebanese Civil War (reference) (also in S: Social Issues and Societal Change: Class and Social Change).
Sharīd al-Manāzil portrays the university student Niẓām, who is a Muslim by birth, but was adopted into a Christian family and eventually moves to a Muslim neighborhood in Beirut (reference). It is set in the city of Beirut, whose neighbourhoods and social structure are portrayed in detail. And as the city descents into war, the reader follows Niẓām’s romantic relationship with Janān and his increasing confrontations with the religious duality of his identity in the context of sectarian violence (also in L: Love, Lust, and Relationships: Inter- religious and ethnic (romantic) relationships: Between Muslims and Christians).
- Rabīaʿ Jābir (1972-, Lebanon) – Al-Iʾtirafāt (2008, English trans. Confessions, 2016). Memoir of a fictional narrator who, when his mother died and his father is near to dying, discovers that his parents are not the ones who saved him when he was shot in 1976 on the demarcation line that split Beirut in two, but that his father is the one who shot him, along with his birth family, and who then took him to his side of the line. This novel is a story about identity: while the narrator built his identity on the bases of love for his family and a fear of the strangers on the other side of the green line, he is forced to revise this view when the people who he believed were demons, are his own relatives (reference).
- Ilyās Khūrī’s (1948-, Lebanon) fiction is described as the perfect embodiment of war-torn Lebanon (reference). In his semi-autobiographical novel al-Jabal al-Ṣaghīr (‘The small mountain’, 1977), for example, Khūrī reflects on his militant engagement with the Left during the Civil War.
His novel Yālū (2002, English trans. Yalo, 2004) is a coming-of-age story in war-torn Beirut. Its hero, Yālū, joins a militia before stealing money and fleeing to Paris with a friend. There, he is scouted by a Lebanese arms dealer who takes him back to guard his family home in Lebanon (reference). Not completely satisfied with his romantic life and affair with the wife of the family, Yālū spends his evenings stalking young lovers, watching them have sex, and robbing and sometimes raping the women. The novel is told from Yālū’s point of view, as he narrates his confessions and brutal experiences, as well as the developments of the war and an entire generation growing up with it, from the prison where he ends up being (reference) (also in P: Police novels, Thrillers and Crimes: Rape and Sexual Abuse).
- Nuhā Samāra’s (1944 – 1992, Palestine) short story ‘al-Ṭāqilāh ʿĀshat Akthar min Amīn’ (‘The tables lived longer than Amin’, 1981) concerns a schoolteacher who is left to take care of her ailing father on her own when her businessman husband decides to accept his company’s offer posting to Paris. Reflecting on the dullness of her marriage life against the backdrop of the daily destruction of Beirut, she decides to liberate herself. She cuts her luxuriant head of hair (that her husband adores) very short and gets involved with Munaḥ, the handsome leader of a guerilla cell who is also a friend of her husband. She gives a clear voice to the view that, if she has been left by her husband to deal with the insanity of the Lebanese Civil War, then the initiative to act in the present to prepare for the future is hers (reference). The story can be found in the similarly titled collection.
- Ghādah al-Sammān (1942-, Syria) – Kawābīs Bayrūt (1976, English trans. Beirut Nightmares, 1997) and Laylat al-Milyār (1986, English trans. The Night of the First Billion, 2005).
Kawābīs Bayrūt is a daily journal of an unnamed protagonist who finds herself trapped for two weeks in her apartment building behind the burning Holiday Inn hotel during the war (reference). As the bombing escalates, she is forced to move in with her up-scale downstairs neighbors, a mother and her son, with whom she competes for the remaining resources. Another central element is the next-door pet-shop where, abandoned by their owner, the animals start eating each other. The narrator chronicles her nightmarish existence to fight fear and insanity during her time of confinement. Despite her harrowing experiences, she ultimately survives her ordeal and is hopeful about what the future holds for her as a budding author (reference) (also in C: Cities: Lebanon: Beirut).
Laylat al-Milyār traces the post-war life of Lebanese exiles in Geneva, Switzerland, at the time of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The exiled follow the developments in their home country with horror and sorrow, while also dealing with immigration, cultural assimilation, and nationalism (also in W: Outside of the Arab World: Europe: Switzerland).
- Ḥanān al-Shaykh (1945, Lebanon) – Ḥikayat Zahra (1980, English trans. Story of Zahra, 1986) (reference). The novel tells the story of Zahra, a young woman who bears the scars of incest and rape and whose life is significantly altered by the eruption of the Lebanese Civil War. When Zahra’s father flees Beirut’s violence by returning to his ancestral village, Zahra ironically thrives in the burning city, which becomes her ‘safe space’, away from her father’s gaze. Furthermore, seeing others in pain makes her feel less alone, and with time she adopts responsibility for those around her. Overcoming the menaced streets, she finds her way to the sniper who controls the neighborhood and attempts to distract him (reference). This sniper rapes her, but she keeps coming back, convinced that by “keeping him busy” she is saving innocent lives. Eventually Zahra meets her death at his hands (reference).
- Jūrj Yarqq (1958-, Lebanon) – Ḥāris al-Mawtā (‘Guard of the dead’, 2015). The young ʿĀbir flees his village to Beirut and joins one of the militias during the Lebanese Civil War. He does not fight however but instead starts working in the morgue of a hospital, while in the nights he operates a theatre. The hospital works based on material interests and the doctors only preform surgery on paying patients. ʿĀbir himself does with the corpses whatever he wants, including taking their golden teeth and selling them and almost fornicating a female corpse. One day, ʿĀbir is kidnapped, and to find out who did it, he relives his past (also in D: Death: Death).
- Lamia Ziadé (1968-, Lebanon / France) – Bye Bye Babylone: Beyrouth 1975 – 1979 (2010, English trans. Bye Bye Babylon: Beirut 1975 – 1979, 2011). This is a French-language autobiographical graphic novel about coming of age during the Lebanese Civil War, in which the narrator portrays her story from the age of seven, starting in 1975 (also in F: Children and Family Life: Children and Adolescents: War and devastation through children’s eyes).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
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- Hanadi al-Samman. 2008. “Out of the Closet: Representation of Homosexuals and Lesbians in Modern Arabic Literature.” JAL 39: 270-310, p. 295, 296
- Maher Jarrar. 2016. “Foreword” in Representations and Visions of Homeland in Modern Arabic Literature, eds. Sebastian Günter and Stephan Milich. Georg Olms Verlag: Hildesheim, Zürich, New York. pp. xvii-xxxiii, p. xxvi-xxvii
- Sūmir Shaḥādah. 2018. “Jabbūr al-Duwayhī fī ‘ʿAyn Wardah’: al-Iḥtifāʾ bi-l-Khathlān.” www.al-akhbar.com, 10 March 2018, https://al-akhbar.com/Kalimat/245887 (last accessed 18 May 2023)
- Aḥlām Māzin Bakrī. 2022. “Ṣūrah al-Ḥarb al-Ahliyyah fī Lubnān Riwāyah ‘Sharīd al-Manāzil’ li-Jabbūr al-Dawīhī Namūthijan.” Majalah al-Lughah al-ʿArabiyyah wa Ādābiha 1(3): 49-72, p. 51, 55
- Marcia Lynx Qualey. 2016. “Rabee Jaber’s novel ‘Confessions’ explores notions of identity, Lebanese Civil War.” www.chicagotribune.com, 23 March 2016, https://www.chicagotribune.com/2016/03/23/rabee-jabers-novel-confessions-explores-notions-of-identity-lebanese-civil-war/(last accessed 24 March 2018)
- EAL, p. 447
- Adam LeBor. 2008. “The Confession.” www.nytimes.com, 2 March 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/books/review/LeBor-t.html (last accessed 29 October 2023)
- Jamāl Jiyyāb and Nihyān Hawāwī. “Sīmiyāʾiyat al-ʿUtbāt al-Naṣiyyah wa-Dalāltuha fī Riwāyat ‘Yālū’ lil-Riwāʾī Ilyās Khūrī Anmūthijan.” Majallat al-Qāriʾ lil-Dirāsāt al-Adabiyyah wa al-Naqdiyyah wa al-Lughawiyyah 5(4): 21-35, p. 32
- Roger Allen. 1995. “The Arabic Short Story and the Status of Women.” in Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature, eds. Roger Allen, Hilary Kilpatrick, and Ed de Moor. London: Saqi Books, 77-90, p. 88
- Yasmine Khayyat. 2016. “Memory Remains: Haunted by home in Lebanese (Post) war Fiction.” JAL 47: 43-61
- Nadine Sinno. 2015. “Milk and Honey, Tabbūleh, and Coke: Orientalist, Local and Global Discourses in Alexandra Chreiteh’s Dāyman Coca-Cola.” MEL, 18(2): 122–143. p. 122, 123
- Roger Allen. 2000. An Introduction to Arabic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 189
- miriam cooke. 1995. “Death and Desire in Iraqi Literature.” in Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature, eds. Roger Allen, Hilary Kilpatrick, and Ed de Moor. London: Saqi Books, 184-200, p. 189-190