‘Always Coca-Cola’, Alexandra Chreiteh’s debut novel, was described by Words Without Borders as “a razor-sharp commentary on how young women in Beirut today are buffeted by the alternately conflicting and conspiring forces of hegemony, capitalism, and patriarchy.” Abeer Ward, the novel’s narrator, belongs to overlapping and contradictory social circles: a mainstream conservative family, a circle of adventurous young friends, Beirut’s communalism, and global consumerism. In the excerpt that follows, Abeer is with her family.
In this excerpt from Elias Khoury’s previously untranslated novella, ‘The Smell of Soap’, the narrator goes to the cinema with a girl he just met. As they watch a documentary on the musician Jamil Al Haddad, the narrator fantasizes about the hours that will follow the film and also remembers his years as a member of an armed militia in Beirut.
Darkness damages desire / Living is less than a drop / Don’t waste your whole body / Now ~ By Bassam Hajjar
The characters in ‘180 Sunsets’ don’t belong in any way to this place called Zahraniyya where they live. They came to this place, twenty or so miles from Lebanon’s capital city Beirut, fleeing their areas of origin, because of the war, or the wars, and here they are, in houses new to them, houses being built there. All the while, they are building resentment and hatred toward each other as if, in their turn, they are getting ready for their own coming war.
Najwa Barakat’s ‘The Bus’ is the story of a group of strangers who share a long bus ride, gradually revealing their stories and their secrets. During a police inspection, the grisly discovery of a severed head on the bus prompts mutual recriminations and soul-searching. The excerpt that follows is taken from Chapter 27.
Hyam Yared’s ‘The Curse’ (La Malédiction), is the story of Hala, a young Lebanese woman born in 1970s Beirut who is stifled by her Catholic-school upbringing, coming of age while the country is under threat of Syrian invasion. This excerpt comes from pages 121-124 of the novel.
The fan is rotating now in my head Allen / And my mouth that looks like a newsstand / Is adorned with silence
An introduction to the Lebanese literary feature By Marcia Lynx Qualey and Yasmina Jraissati Literary traditions from the area we now call Lebanon have been shape-shifting for a thousand years and more. Although poetry was the region’s first love, the modern novel began to coalesce with the brilliant and peripatetic Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq’s four-volume novel … Continued
On June 16, 1957, a shoot-out in a remote Lebanese church left two dozen dead. In the aftermath, the town was torn in two. Jabbour Douaihy’s ‘June Rain’ reconstructs the day through the viewpoints of various people whose lives were altered. The excerpt that follows is taken from the first chapter of the novel.