After the Lebanese Civil War, many Lebanese novelists committed themselves to building a "memory for the future." What resulted was a vital contribution to the legacy of contemporary Arabic literature. Through interviews, literary analysis, and the lens of trauma studies, Lang sheds light on what it means to remember through post-war literature.

“Truly a masterpiece.” —Lawrence Joseph On a ravaged street overlooking a cemetery in a Christian enclave in war-torn 1970s Beirut, we meet Pavlov, the son of a local undertaker. When his father dies suddenly, Pavlov is approached by a member of the mysterious Hellfire Society—an anti-religious sect that arranges secret burial for outcasts denied last rites because of their religion or sexuality. Pavlov agrees to take on his father’s work for the society, and over the course of the novel he becomes a survivor-chronicler of his embattled and faded community at the heart of Lebanon’s civil war.

Addressing one of the most pressing issues of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) that is still unresolved almost 30 years later, this book adopts a political, sociological, and anthropological approach to look at periods of transition from conflict to peace in Lebanon. Inducing a set of questions about the social and political system, the post-conflict state has been pushing for a politics of amnesty and amnesia. The case study delves into the notion of transition from conflict to peace in Lebanon by looking in the case of the estimated 17,000 people who disappeared during the Civil War. Using the concept of liminality to understand the evolution of the issue over the years, the book follows the trajectory of the relatives of the missing, who have formed a communitas – a group sharing strong feelings of comradeship and brother/sisterhood by virtue of finding themselves in the same situation. Offering a novel way of looking at transitions, the book is a significant contribution to peace studies, and it will be an interest of students and academics working in human rights, political science, and the Middle East disciplines.

A reflective examination of everyday life in Lebanon in times of precarity and political torpor.

This book examines the phenomenon of the post-civil war Anglophone Lebanese fictional narrative.

A powerful novel about trauma and forgiveness Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction Finalist for the PEN Translation Prize Finalist for the USA Translation Award During the violence and chaos of the Lebanese Civil War, a car pulls up to a roadblock on a narrow side street in Beirut. After a brief and confused exchange, several rounds of bullets are fired into the car, killing everyone inside except for a small boy of four or five. The boy is taken to the hospital, adopted by one of the assassins, and raised in a new family. “My father used to kidnap and kill people …” begins this haunting tale of a child who was raised by the murderer of his real family. The narrator of Confessions doesn’t shy away from the horrible truth of his murderous father—instead he confronts his troubled upbringing and seeks to understand the distortions and complexities of his memories, his war-torn country, and the quiet war that rages inside of him.

Largely based on new research and containing previously unpublished material, the highly successful Lebanese Civil War mini-series provides an in-depth insight into a complex, multi-facetted conflict, and an inclusive and balanced, blow-by-blow account of all the known actions in the air, on the ground, and at sea.