Post-War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction

Book excerpt: This book examines the phenomenon of the post-civil war Anglophone Lebanese fictional narrative. The texts chosen for study have been produced in, and are substantially about, life in exile. They therefore deal not only with the brutal civil strife in Lebanon (1975-1990) but with one of its crucial and long-standing by-products: expatriation. Syrine Hout shows how these texts characterise a distinctly new literary and cultural trend and have founded an Anglophone Lebanese diasporic literature.The authors discussed in the book are Rabih Alameddine, Tony Hanania, Rawi Hage, Nada Awar Jarra, Patricia Sarrafian Ward and Nathalie Ab-Ezzi. In her exploration of their writings Hout teases out the different meanings and reformulations of home, be it Lebanon as a nation, a house, a host country, an irretrievable pre-war childhood, a state of in-between dwelling, a portable state of mind, and/or a utopian ideal.