In Other Lives, Myriam's travels take her from her Shouf mountain village to Beirut, Melbourne and Paradise, Australia to Nairobi, Mombasa and Cape Town. Unwilling to be tied down by geography, language or men, Myriam forges a path through the world that is at once hers uniquely and also deeply informed by her life's experiences. Again and again, she is drawn back to the Lebanon of her birth and childhood, only to find it no longer there. She is forced to confront the ghosts of the civil war—her dead brother, her disappeared lover, and the life that she left behind when she immigrated to Australia. Humaydan deftly explores one woman's negotiation of love and war, intimacy and loss, migration and home in a way that speaks beyond individual but to a collective experience. Views: 23
Translated by Michelle Hartman.Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.Featuring brand-new stories by: Rawi Hage, Muhammad Abi Samra, Leila Eid, Hala Kawtharani, Marie Tawk, Bana Baydoun, Hyam Yared, Najwa Barakat, Alawiyeh Sobh, Mazen Zahreddine, Abbas Beydoun, Bachir Hilal, Zena El Khalil, Mazen Maarouf, and Tarek Abi Samra.Most of the writers in this volume are still living in Beirut, so this is an important contribution to Middle East literature—not the "outsider's perspective" that often characterizes contemporary literature set in the region.From the introduction by Iman Humaydan (translated by Michelle Hartman):"Beirut is a city of contradiction and paradox. It is an urban and rural city, one of violence and forgiveness, memory and forgetfulness. Beirut is a city... Views: 21
The story of three different young women marks the literary debut of an amazing writer from LebanonAlways Coca-Cola is the story of three very different young women attending university in Beirut: Abeer, Jana, and Yasmine. The narrator, Abeer Ward (fragrant rose, in Arabic), daughter of a conservative family, admits wryly that her name is also the name of her father's flower shop. Abeer's bedroom window is filled by a view of a Coca-Cola sign featuring the image of her sexually adventurous friend, Jana. From the novel's opening paragraph—"When my mother was pregnant with me, she had only one craving. That craving was for Coca Cola" —first-time novelist Alexandra Chreiteh asks us to see, with wonder, humor, and dismay, how inextricably confused naming and desire, identity and branding. The names—and the novel's edgy, cynical humor—might be recognizable across languages, cultures, and geographies. But Chreiteh's novel is first and foremost an... Views: 17
