This extraordinary bestseller is still the most incisive, thought-provoking book ever written about the Middle East. Thomas L. Friedman, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, and now the Foreign Affairs columnist on the op-ed page of the "New York Times", drew on his ten years in the Middle East to write a book that "The Wall Street Journal" called "a sparkling intellectual guidebook... an engrossing journey not to be missed." Now with a new chapter that brings the ever-changing history of the conflict in the Middle East up to date, this seminal historical work reaffirms both its timeliness and its timelessness. "If you're only going to read one book on the Middle East, this is it." -- Seymour Hersh

From Beirut to Jerusalem

Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon

Today Lebanon is one of the world's most divided countries. But paradoxically the faction-ridden Lebanese, both Christians and Muslims, have never shown a keener consciousness of common identity. How can this be? In the light of modern scholarship, a famous Lebanese writer and scholar examines the historical myths on which his country's warring communities have based their conflicting visions of the Lebanese nation. He shows that Lebanon cannot afford this divisiveness, that in order to develop and maintain a sense of political unity, it is necesary to distinuish fact from fiction and then build on what is real in the common experience of both groups.

Salibi offers a major reinterpretation of Lebanese history and provides remarkable insights into the dynamic of Lebanon's recent conflict. In so doing, he illuminates important facets of his country's present and future. This book also gives a masterly account of how the imagined communities that underlie modern nationalism are created and will be of interest to students of international affairs as well as Near Eastern scholars.

A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered

Lebanon seems a country in the grip of permanent crisis. In recent years it has suffered blow after blow, from Rafiq Hariri’s assassination in 2005, to the 2006 July War, to the current Syrian conflict, which has brought a million refugees streaming into the country.

This is an account not just of Lebanon’s high politics, with its endless rows, walk-outs, machinations and foreign alliances, but also of the politics of everyday life: all the stresses and strains the country’s inhabitants face, from electricity black-outs and uncollected rubbish to stagnating wages and property bubbles. Andrew Arsan moves between parliament and the public squares where protesters gather, between luxury high-rises and refugee camps, and between expensive nightclubs and seafront promenades, providing a comprehensive view of Lebanon in the twenty-first century.

Where others have treated Lebanon’s woes as exceptional, a by-product of its sectarianism and particular vulnerability to regional crises, Arsan argues that there is nothing particular about Lebanon’s predicament. Rather, it is a country of the age―one of neoliberal economics, populist fervour, forced displacement, rising xenophobia, and public disillusion. Lebanon, in short, offers us a lens through which to look on our times.

Lebanon: A Country in Fragments

“Evocative and beautifully written, "House of Stone" . . . should be read by anyone who wishes to understand the agonies and hopes of the Middle East.” — Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and author of "Crossing Mandelbaum Gate" 

“In rebuilding his family home in southern Lebanon, Shadid commits an extraordinarily generous act of restoration for his wounded land, and for us all.” — Annia Ciezadlo, author of "Day of Honey" 

In spring 2011, Anthony Shadid was one of four "New York Times" reporters captured in Libya, cuffed and beaten, as that country was seized by revolution. When he was freed, he went home. Not to Boston or Beirut—where he lives— or to Oklahoma City, where his Lebanese-American family had settled and where he was raised. Instead, he returned to his great-grandfather’s estate, a house that, over three years earlier, Shadid had begun to rebuild. 

"House of Stone" is the story of a battle-scarred home and a war correspondent’s jostled spirit, and of how reconstructing the one came to fortify the other. In this poignant and resonant memoir, the author of the award-winning "Night Draws Near "creates a mosaic of past and present, tracing the house’s renewal alongside his family’s flight from Lebanon and resettlement in America. In the process, Shadid memorializes a lost world, documents the shifting Middle East, and provides profound insights into this volatile landscape. "House of Stone" is an unforgettable meditation on war, exile, rebirth, and the universal yearning for home.

House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

An inventive, exuberant novel that takes us from the shimmering dunes of ancient Egypt to the war-torn streets of twenty-first-century Lebanon.

In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father’s deathbed. The city is a shell of the Beirut Osama remembers, but he and his friends and family take solace in the things that have always sustained them: gossip, laughter, and, above all, stories. 

Osama’s grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching stories—of his arrival in Lebanon, an orphan of the Turkish wars, and of how he earned the name al-Kharrat, the fibster—are interwoven with classic tales of the Middle East, stunningly reimagined. Here are Abraham and Isaac; Ishmael, father of the Arab tribes; the ancient, fabled Fatima; and Baybars, the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders. Here, too, are contemporary Lebanese whose stories tell a larger, heartbreaking tale of seemingly endless war—and of survival. 

Like a true hakawati, Rabih Alameddine has given us an Arabian Nights for this century—a funny, captivating novel that enchants and dazzles from its very first lines: “Listen. Let me take you on a journey beyond imagining. Let me tell you a story.”

The Hakawati

A complex thriller, The Mehlis Report introduces English readers to a highly talented Arabic writer. When former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri is killed by a massive bomb blast, the U.N. appoints German judge Detlev Mehlisto conduct an investigation of the attack -- while explosions continue to rock Beirut. Mehlis's report is eagerly awaited by the entire Lebanese population.

First we meet Saman Yarid, a middle-aged architect who wanders the tense streets of Beirut and, like everyone else in the city, can't stop thinking about the pending report. Saman's sister Josephine, who was kidnapped in 1983, narrates the second part of The Mehlis Report Josephine is dead, yet exists in a bizarre underworld in the bowels of Beirut where the dead are busy writing their memoirs. Then the ghost of Hariri himself appears...

The Mehlis Report

Is it really possible to love one’s enemies? 

That’s the question that sparked a fascinating and, at times, terrifying journey into the heart of the Middle East during the summer of 2008. It was a trip that began in Egypt, passed beneath the steel and glass high rises of Saudi Arabia, then wound through the bullet- pocked alleyways of Beirut and dusty streets of Damascus, before ending at the cradle of the world’s three major religions: Jerusalem.
"
Tea with Hezbollah" combines nail-biting narrative with the texture of rich historical background, as readers join novelist Ted Dekker and his co-author and Middle East expert, Carl Medearis, on a hair-raising journey. They are with them in every rocky cab ride, late-night border crossing, and back-room conversation as they sit down one-on-one with some of the most notorious leaders of the Arab world. These candid discussions with leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, with muftis, sheikhs, and ayatollahs, with Osama bin Laden’s brothers, reveal these men to be real people with emotions, fears, and hopes of their own. Along the way, Dekker and Medearis discover surprising answers and even more surprising questions that they could not have anticipated—questions that lead straight to the heart of Middle Eastern conflict.

Through powerful narrative "Tea With Hezbollah" will draw the West into a completely fresh understanding of those we call our enemies and the teaching that dares us to love them. A must read for all who see the looming threat rising in the Middle East.

Tea with Hezbollah: Sitting at the Enemies' Table Our Journey Through the Middle East

June Rain. Imagine-that you are young. Imagine-that by the merest of chances you meet the love of your life. Imagine-that you experience a series of wondrous moments in which almost imperceptible events take on life-changing significance. Imagine-that you walk into a storm so vast that it seems to drain all light and color from the world, and that you emerge from it with a new understanding of life and truth and God. Imagine-yourself in a world that all at once begins to sparkle in boundless sunshine. .a romance of ideas by Brandon Knightley

June Rain

This spellbinding novel narrates the many-layered recollections of a hallucinating man in devastated Beirut. The desolate, almost surreal, urban landscape is enriched by the unfolding of the family sagas of Niqula Mitri and his beloved Shamsa, the Kurdish maid. Mitri reminisces about his Egyptian mother and his father who came back to settle in Beirut after a long stay in Egypt. Both Mitri and his father are textile merchants and see the world through the code of cloth, from the intimacy of linen, velvet, and silk to the most impersonal of synthetics. Shamsa in turn relates her story, the myriad adventures of her parents and grandparents who moved from Iraqi Kurdistan to Beirut. Haunting scenes of pastoral Kurds are juxtaposed against the sedentary decadence of metropolitan residents. Barakat weaves into her sophisticated narrative shreds of scientific discourse about herbal plants and textile crafts, customs and manners of Arabs, Armenians, and Kurds, mythological figures from ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, and Arabia, the theosophy of the African Dogons and the medieval Byzantines, and historical accounts of the Crusades in the Holy Land and the silk route to China.

The Tiller of Waters

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. In Rawi Hage's unforgettable novel, winner of the 2008 IMPAC Prize, this famous quote by Camus becomes a touchstone for two young men caught in Lebanon's civil war. Bassam and George are childhood best friends who have grown to adulthood in war torn Beirut. Now they must choose their futures: to stay in the city and consolidate power through crime; or to go into exile abroad, alienated from the only existence they have known. Bassam chooses one path: obsessed with leaving Beirut, he embarks on a series of petty crimes to finance his departure. Meanwhile, George builds his power in the underworld of the city and embraces a life of military service, crime for profit, killing, and drugs.


Told in the voice of Bassam, "De Niro's Game" is a beautiful, explosive portrait of a contemporary young man shaped by a lifelong experience of war. Rawi Hage's brilliant style mimics a world gone mad: so smooth and apparently sane that its razor-sharp edges surprise and cut deeply. A powerful meditation on life and death in a war zone, and what comes after.

De Niro's Game

This is the first comprehensive history of Lebanon in the modern period. It is entirely unique as the last history of Lebanon was published more than forty years ago. Written by a leading Lebanese scholar and based on previously inaccessible archives, it is a fascinating and beautifully-written account of one of the world's most fabled countries.

Starting with the formation of Ottoman Lebanon in the sixteenth century, Fawwaz Traboulsi covers the growth of Beirut as a capital for trade and culture through the nineteenth century. The main part of the book concentrates on Lebanon's development in the twentieth century and the conflicts that led up to the major wars in the 1970s and 1980s. Lebanon in the twentieth century has seen turbulent times, the results of which we still see today.

This is a rich history of Lebanon that brings to life its politics, its people, and the crucial role that it has always played in world affairs.

A History of Modern Lebanon

The mysterious Phoenicians and the ancient Mediterranean are experienced in richer detail than ever before in this well researched and intriguing narrative. (There is a new edition of this book, see "Phoenicians".) Instead of seeing darkness in the years before classical Greece, we now see glimmers of light revealing a continuous parade of remarkable societies, great leaders and epic events. Drawing back the veil of secrecy surrounding the Phoenicians uncovers new glimpses of Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and people of other societies. Sanford Holst is one of the world's leading authorities on the Phoenicians, and appears in the BBC series Ancient Worlds. Elected a member of the prestigious Royal Historical Society for his work in this field, Holst has presented academic papers on the Phoenicians at universities around the world. Working with respected experts, often on-site, he has added photos, sources, and five years of additional research to his previous work. This is a walk through the idyllic ancient Mediterranean you will long remember.

Phoenician Secrets: Exploring the Ancient Mediterranean

This is the story of Zena, a young woman who finds herself under the spell of a city that threatens to engulf her in war, grief, alcohol, Prozac and love affairs.

In the streets armed militias carve out their territories, while ragged construction workers rebuild the city. Refugees sleep five to a bed as bleach-blondes with matching nose jobs wend their way to the next drug-fuelled supernightclub. At any moment, the bombs will start falling.

Meanwhile, Zena and her best friend Maya must try to make sense of their lives amidst the craziness, and negotiate the city’s many obsessions including cosmetic surgery, husband hunting and Kalashnikovs.

As honest as it is forgiving, this artist’s memoir pits love and art against the ever present threat of war.


Zena el Khalil, born in 1976 in London, has lived in Nigeria, London, New York and Beirut. She is an installation artist, painter, curator and environmental activist. During the July 2006 attacks on Lebanon, her blog beirutupdate.blogspot.com received international acclaim. It was publicised on news portals such as CNN and the BBC and excerpted in the "Guardian" and "Der Spiegel" online. She lives and works in Beirut.

Beirut, I Love You: A Memoir

An inside story of Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State, anchored by Ghattas' own perspective and her quest to understand America's place in the world 
"From Beirut to Washington" is the first book of its kind: drawing on extensive interviews with administration officials, including Clinton herself, as well as other players around Washington and overseas, it provides a detailed look at an intensely private woman--arguably the most powerful woman in the world--from a journalist and author with both an insider and a global perspective.  
"From Beirut to Washington" tells the story of Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, from the first days of the Obama administration, to the drama of Wikileaks, to the "Arab Spring" uprisings, and the standoff with Iran. Through Ghattas' eyes, we see Clinton under the intense professional spotlight commanded by the world’s chief diplomat, but also in the softer lighting of the more personal nuances of foreign relations - cheerfully boarding her plane at 3 AM after no sleep, committing a diplomatic blunder when she goes off-script at a press conference in Jerusalem, or cajoling foreign ministers to keep the coalition together during the war in Libya.  Viewed through Ghattas' vantage point as a half-Dutch, half-Lebanese citizen who grew up in the crossfire of the Lebanon civil war--and her personal quest to understand America's place in a rapidly changing global landscape--the book offers a close-up of diplomacy at the highest level while seeking to answer pivotal questions about the United States. Is America still the global superpower? If not, who or what will replace it, and what will it mean for America and the world? 


The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power

This is the most complete history of the Phoenicians assembled to date (2005 edition, there is a new edition of this book) and includes research by leading scholars of the Mediterranean. Since the Phoenicians were involved with the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians in many of the great events of antiquity, this detailed account brings those epic events to life as never before. These shipbuilders from Lebanon became famous sea traders whose cedar was used in early Egyptian temples and placed in the Great Pyramids. Archaeology and classical sources show how they were involved with the beautiful Minoan civilization on Crete, and with the Sea Peoples who influenced the fall of the Mycenaeans and Hittites. They founded colonies as far as Spain and Morocco, and circulated the first alphabet. They competed with the rising Classical Greeks, and lost cities to Alexander the Great. Successful campaigns by Hannibal of Carthage were followed by an epic loss to newly-emerging Rome. This book has 113 sources, freshened with many maps and pictures.

Phoenicians: Lebanon's Epic Heritage

"This is not a manifesto against men in general. Nor is it a manifesto against Arab men in particular. It is, however, a howl in the face of a particular species of men: the macho species, Supermen, as they like to envision themselves. But Superman is a lie."

In this explosive sequel to "I Killed Scheherazade", Joumana Haddad examines the patriarchal system that continues to dominate in the Arab world and beyond. From monotheist religions and the concept of marriage to institutionalized machismo and widespread double standards, Haddad reflects upon the vital need for a new masculinity in these times of revolution and change in the Middle East.


Joumana Haddad is an awardwinning poet, literary translator, publisher and journalist. In 2008 she launched the Arab world’s first erotic cultural magazine, Jasad (Body), which made headlines around the world. Haddad was selected as one of the Beirut39 authors in 2009. I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman was critically acclaimed and translated into thirteen languages. She lives in Beirut with her two sons.

Superman Is an Arab: On God, Marriage, Macho Men and Other Disastrous Inventions

One of Beirut’s most celebrated voices, Rabih Alameddine follows his international bestseller, "The Hakawati", with a heartrending novel that celebrates the singular life of an obsessive introvert, revealing Beirut’s beauties and horrors along the way.

Aaliya Sohbi lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, divorced, and childless, Aaliya is her family’s "unnecessary appendage.” Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The thirty-seven books that Aaliya has translated have never been read—by anyone. After overhearing her neighbors, "the three witches,” discussing her too-white hair, Aaliya accidentally dyes her hair too blue.

In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman’s late-life crisis, readers follow Aaliya’s digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut. Insightful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and Aaliya’s volatile past. As she tries to overcome her aging body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left.

A love letter to literature and its power to define who we are, the gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a nuanced rendering of a single woman's reclusive life in the Middle East.

An Unnecessary Woman

Joumana Haddad is angry about the way Arab women are portrayed in the West. In "I Killed Scheherazade" she challenges prevalent notions of identity and womanhood in the Middle East and speaks of her own intellectual development and the liberating impact of literature on her life. Fiery and candid, this is a provocative exploration of what it means to be an Arab woman today.


Born in 1970 in Beirut, Joumana Haddad is an award-winning poet, literary translator, magazine publisher and journalist. Joumana is the cultural editor for the "an-Nahar" newspaper and in 2008 launched the Arab world’s first erotic cultural magazine, "Jasad" (Body). Joumana was chosen as one of the best Arab authors under 39 in 2009 (Beirut39). She lives in Lebanon with her two sons.

I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman

Raised in a hybrid family shaped by divorce and remarriage, and by Beirut in wartime, Sarah finds a fragile peace in self-imposed exile in the United States. Her extraordinary dignity is supported by a best friend, a grown-up son, occasional sensual pleasures, and her determination to tell her own story.

I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

Detailing the impact of the AIDS epidemic and the Lebanese civil war in Beirut on a circle of friends and family, "Koolaids" tells the stories of characters who can no longer love or think except in fragments of time, each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears. Clips, quips, vignettes and hallucinations, tragic news reports and hilarious short plays, conversations with both the quick and the dead, all shine their combined lights to reveal the way we experience life today in this ambitious novel.

Koolaids: The Art of War

With the acclaim won by her first two novels, Hanan al-Shaykh established herself as the Arab world's foremost woman writer. "Beirut Blues", published to similar acclaim, further confirms her place in Arabic literature, and brings her writing to a new, groundbreaking level.

The daring fragmented structure of this epistolary novel mirrors the chaos surrounding the heroine, Asmahan, as she futilely writes letters to her loved ones, to her friends, to Beirut, and to the war itself--letters of lament that are never to be answered except with their own resounding echoes. In "Beirut Blues", Hanan al-Shaykh evokes a Beirut that has been seen by few, and that will never be seen again.

Beirut Blues

Lebanon, a country no bigger than Connecticut, has become a battleground for the political, strategic and ideological conflicts of its neighbors and the great powers. It has come to reflect the broad historical experiences of the modern Middle East. "Beware of Small States" is an elegant and incisive history of Lebanon culminating with the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah and its aftermath. David Hirst—a former Middle East correspondent for "The Guardian", whose tough, skeptical voice has earned him death threats and seen him banned from six Arab countries—crafts a narrative that is essential for anyone wishing to understand the current political climate of the Middle East.

Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East

In the summer of 1978, Musa al Sadr, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Shia sect in Lebanon, disappeared mysteriously while on a visit to Libya. As in the Shia myth of the Hidden Imam, this modern-day Imam left his followers upholding his legacy and awaiting his return. Considered an outsider when he had arrived in Lebanon in 1959 from his native Iran, he gradually assumed the role of charismatic mullah, and was instrumental in transforming the Shia, a quiescent and downtrodden Islamic minority, into committed political activists.

What sort of person was Musa al Sadr? What beliefs in the Shia doctrine did his life embody? Where did he fit into the tangle of Lebanon's warring factions? What was behind his disappearance? In this fascinating and compelling narrative, Fouad Ajami resurrects the Shia's neglected history, both distant and recent, and interweaves the life and work of Musa al Sadr with the larger strands of the Shia past.

The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon

A luminous portrait of life in the Middle East, "Day of Honey "weaves history, cuisine, and firsthand reporting into a fearless, intimate exploration of everyday survival. In the fall of 2003, Annia Ciezadlo spent her honeymoon in Baghdad. Over the next six years, while living in Baghdad and Beirut, she broke bread with Shiites and Sunnis, warlords and refugees, matriarchs and mullahs. "Day of Honey "is her memoir of the hunger for food and friendship—a communion that feeds the soul as much as the body in times of war. Reporting from occupied Baghdad, Ciezadlo longs for normal married life. She finds it in Beirut, her husband’s hometown, a city slowly recovering from years of civil war. But just as the young couple settles into a new home, the bloodshed they escaped in Iraq spreads to Lebanon and reawakens the terrible specter of sectarian violence. In lucid, fiercely intelligent prose, Ciezadlo uses food and the rituals of eating to illuminate a vibrant Middle East that most Americans never see. We get to know people like Roaa, a determined young Kurdish woman who dreams of exploring the world, only to see her life under occupation become confined to the kitchen; Abu Rifaat, a Baghdad book lover who spends his days eavesdropping in the ancient city’s legendary cafés; Salama al-Khafaji, a soft-spoken dentist who eludes assassins to become Iraq’s most popular female politician; and Umm Hassane, Ciezadlo’s sardonic Lebanese mother-in-law, who teaches her to cook rare family recipes—which are included in a mouthwatering appendix of Middle Eastern comfort food. As bombs destroy her new family’s ancestral home and militias invade her Beirut neighborhood, Ciezadlo illuminates the human cost of war with an extraordinary ability to anchor the rhythms of daily life in a larger political and historical context. From forbidden Baghdad book clubs to the oldest recipes in the world, Ciezadlo takes us inside the Middle East at a historic moment when hope and fear collide. "Day of Honey "is a brave and compassionate portrait of civilian life during wartime—a moving testament to the power of love and generosity to transcend the misery of war.

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War

As Beirut exploded with the bombs and violence of a ruthless civil war in the ’80s, a nine-year-old Salma Abdelnour and her family fled Lebanon to start a new life in the States. Ever since then— even as she built a thriving career as a food and travel writer in New York City—Salma has had a hunch that Beirut was still her home.  She kept dreaming of moving back—and finally decided to do it.

But could she resume her life in Beirut, so many years after her family moved away? Could she, or anyone for that matter, ever really go home again? 

"Jasmine and Fire" is Salma’s poignant and humorous journey of try-ing to resettle in Beirut and fumbling through the new realities of life in one of the world’s most complex, legendary, ever-vibrant, ever- troubled cities. What’s more, in a year of roiling changes around the Middle East and the rise of the Arab Spring, Salma found herself in the midst of the turmoil, experiencing it all up close. 

As she comes to grips with all the changes in her life—a love left behind in New York and new relationships blossoming in Beirut—Salma takes comfort in some of Lebanon’s enduring traditions, particularly its extraordinary food culture. Through the sights, sounds, and flavors of a city full of beauty, tragedy, despair, and hope, Salma slowly begins to reconnect with the place she’s longed for her entire life.

Jasmine and Fire: A Bittersweet Year in Beirut

?Beirut in the 1970s is a paradise. Wealthy families ride escalators and fill shopping carts with imported food and luxury products from Paris and New York. Lamia Ziad�, seven years old, dreams of banana splits, American candy, flying on Pan Am Airways, and visiting the local cinema. Considered by the elite the "Paris, Las Vegas or Monaco of the Middle East," Beirut was in reality a powder keg, waiting for a spark. On April 13, 1975 Lamia and her family returned from lunch in the countryside to find a city in flames. Looking back on the golden days before the war, and its immediate, devastating effects, Bye Bye Babylon positions an elegiac and shocking narrative next to a child's perspective of the years 1975-79: of consumer icons next to burning buildings, scenes of violence and sparkling new weapons painted in vivid Technicolor--war as pop. It is a unique graphic memoir, and an important visual record of a terrible war.

Bye-Bye Babylon: Beirut 1975-1979

A "New York Times Book Review" Notable Book of the Year

One of "Kansas City Star"'s 100 Noteworthy Books of the Year

A "Boldtype "Notable Book of the Year

A "Christian Science Monitor" Best Book of the Year

A "San Francisco Chronicle" Best Book of the Year

Drawing on the stories he gathered from refugee camps over the course of many years, Elias Khoury's epic novel "Gate of the Sun "has been called the first magnum opus of the Palestinian saga.

Yunes, an aging Palestinian freedom fighter, lies in a coma. Keeping vigil at the old man's bedside is his spiritual son, Khalil, who nurses Yunes, refusing to admit that his hero may never regain consciousness. Like a modern-day Scheherazade, Khalil relates the story of Palestinian exile while also recalling Yunes's own extraordinary life and his love for his wife, whom he meets secretly over the years at Bab al-Shams, the Gate of the Sun.

Gate of the Sun: Bab Al-Shams

This work is a combination of an account of a most captivating Lebanese personality with a penetrating analysis of the historical and religious contours of Lebanon. Mordechai Nisan spent much time with Etienne Sakr between 2000 and 2001. Set within the context of the national political narrative of Lebanon, this volume offers a portrait of Sakr and the times in which he lived before his exile to Israel in May 2000. Personal testimonies from Lebanese residents and conversations with others outside of Lebanon who knew Abu-Arz, in addition to interviews with Israelis aquainted with him, provide the authenticity to the portrait of this remarkable man.

The Conscience of Lebanon: A Political Biography of Etienne Sakr (Abu-Arz)

Up to the twentieth century, Islamic charitable endowments provided the material foundation of the Muslim world. In Lebanon, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the imposition of French colonial rule, many of these endowments reverted to private property circulating in the marketplace. In contemporary Beirut, however, charitable endowments have resurged as mosques, Islamic centers, and non-profit organizations. A historical anthropology in dialogue with Islamic law, "God's Property" demonstrates how these endowments have been drawn into secular logics—no longer the property of God but of the Muslim community—and shaped by the modern state and modern understandings of charity and property. Although these transformations produced new kinds of loyalties and new ways of being in society, Moumtaz’s ethnography reveals the furtive persistence of endowment practices that perpetuate older ways of thinking of one’s self and one’s responsibilities toward family and state.

God's Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State

Ten-year-old Ruba lives in a village outside Beirut. From her family home, she can see the buildings shimmering on the horizon and the sea stretched out beside them. She can also hear the rumble of the shelling - this is Lebanon in the 1980s and civil war is tearing the country apart.

A Girl Made of Dust

A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, "Black Skin, White Masks" is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today.

Black Skin, White Masks

Translated from the French by Georgina Kleege, "Sitt Marie Rose", is the story of a woman abducted by militiamen during the Civil War in Lebanon. It reveals the tribal mentality which makes the Middle East a dangerous powerhouse. It constitutes a new narrative form and is already a classic of war literature. It won the France-Pays Arabes award in Paris and has been translated into six languages.

Sitt Marie Rose

Zahra’s mother uses her as a cover for her meetings with a lover; Zahra’s strict father mistreats her for being complicit in her mother’s affair. Fleeing from Beirut in search of solace, Zahra stays with her uncle in West Africa—and then uses marriage as another kind of escape. Back in Beirut, love finally comes to her, but with terrible consequences. Banned in several Middle Eastern countries since its original publication, The Story of Zahra is an intoxicating, provocative story of a young woman’s coming of age in a city torn apart by war.

With more than 21,000 copies in print of "Women Of Sand And Myrrh," and more than 15,000 copies of "The Story Of Zahra," Hanan al-Shaykh is the best known and most admired woman writer of the Arab world. The paperback publication of "Zahra" will bring this passionate and courageous novel to a much larger group of readers. Its haunting story of a young Lebanese woman who attempts to stem the violence in Beirut by initiating a sexual liaison with a sniper has "lifted the corner of a dark curtain" ( "Sunday Telegraph" ) from a world that fascinates us all." "The Story Of Zahra" is a classic by any standards."-- "Village Voice Literary Supplement."

"This rich tale mesmerizes with its frank sexuality and scenes of war-torn Beirut."-- "Publishers Weekly."

The Story of Zahra

Tanios was a child of the mountains of Lebanon in the 1880s when the Egyptian Pashas were struggling against Ottoman domination and the British and French plotted with and against each other. Amin Maalouf's novel, "The Rock of Tanios", begins with a recollection of the rock on which Tanios was last seen sitting and weaves together the strands of the fascinating legend of his disappearance. Tanios was the illegitimate son of a powerful Sheik whose every action brought chaos into his village. When Tanios's adopted father caused the death of a powerful political rival, he and his son together fled their homeland. In hiding, they became entangled with international spies and politicians; Tanios soon took on the roll of intermediary between dueling European and Middle Eastern powers.

The Rock of Tanios

"Special, strange, and peculiarly potent... Extraordinary." —"Variety" 
One night in Beirut in September 1982, while Israeli soldiers secured the area, Christian militia members entered the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and began to massacre hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinians. Ari Folman was one of those Israeli soldiers, but for more than twenty years he remembered nothing of that night or of the weeks leading up to it. Then came a friend's disturbing dream, and with it Folman's need to excavate the truth of the war in Lebanon and answer the crucial question: what was he doing during the hours of slaughter? 
Challenging the collective amnesia of friends and fellow soldiers, Folman painfully, candidly pieces together the war and his place in it. Gradually, the blankness of his mind is filled in by scenes of combat and patrol, misery and carnage, as well as dreams and hallucinations. Soldiers are haunted by inexplicable nightmares and flashbacks - snapping, growling dogs with teeth bared and eyes glowing orange; a recurring image of three young men rising naked out of the sea to drift into the Beirut battlefield. Tanks crush cars and buildings with lethal indifference; snipers pick off men on donkeys, men in cars, men drinking coffee; a soldier waltzes through a storm of bullets; rock songs fill the air, and then yellow flares. The recollections accumulate until Ari Folman arrives at Sabra and Shatila and his investigation reaches its terrible end. 
The result is a gripping reconstruction, a probing inquiry into the unreliable quality of memory, and, above all, a powerful denunciation of the senselessness of all wars. Profoundly original in form and approach, "Waltz with Bashir" will take its place as one of the great works of wartime testimony.

Waltz With Bashir: A Lebanon War Story

Becky has a fabulous flat in London's trendiest neighborhood, a troupe of glamorous socialite friends, and a closet brimming with the season's must-haves. The only trouble is that she can't actually afford it–not any of it.

Her job writing at Successful Savings not only bores her to tears, it doesn't pay much at all. And lately Becky's been chased by dismal letters from the bank –letters with large red sums she can't bear to read–and they're getting ever harder to ignore.

She tries cutting back. But none of her efforts succeeds. Becky's only consolation is to buy herself something ... just a little something....

Finally a story arises that Becky actually cares about, and her front-page article catalyzes a chain of events that will transform her life–and the lives of those around her–forever.

Confessions of a Shopaholic (Shopaholic, #1)

Beirut is a city divided. Following the Green Line of the civil war, dividing the Christian east and the Muslim west, today hundreds of such lines dissect the city. For the residents of Beirut, urban planning could hold promise: a new spatial order could bring a peaceful future. But with unclear state structures and outsourced public processes, urban planning has instead become a contest between religious-political organizations and profit-seeking developers. Neighborhoods reproduce poverty, displacement, and urban violence.

"For the War Yet to Come" examines urban planning in three neighborhoods of Beirut's southeastern peripheries, revealing how these areas have been developed into frontiers of a continuing sectarian order. Hiba Bou Akar argues these neighborhoods are arranged, not in the expectation of a bright future, but according to the logic of "the war yet to come": urban planning plays on fears and differences, rumors of war, and paramilitary strategies to organize everyday life. As she shows, war in times of peace is not fought with tanks, artillery, and rifles, but involves a more mundane territorial contest for land and apartment sales, zoning and planning regulations, and infrastructure projects.

For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut's Frontiers

Hezbollah is the most powerful Islamist group operating in the Middle East today, and no other Western journalist has penetrated as deeply inside this secretive organization as Nicholas Blanford. Now Blanford has written the first comprehensive inside account of Hezbollah and its enduring struggle against Israel. Based on more than a decade and a half of reporting in Lebanon and conversations with Hezbollah’s determined fighters, Blanford reveals their ideology, motivations, and training, as well as new information on military tactics, weapons, and sophisticated electronic warfare and communications systems.

Using exclusive sources and his own dogged investigative skills, Blanford traces Hezbollah’s extraordinary evolution—from a zealous group of raw fighters motivated by Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution into the most formidable non-state military organization in the world, whose charismatic leader vows to hasten Israel’s destruction. With dramatic eyewitness accounts, including Blanford’s own experiences of the battles, massacres, triumphs, and tragedies that have marked the conflict, the story follows the increasingly successful campaign of resistance that led to Israel’s historic withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.

"Warriors of God" shows how Hezbollah won hearts and minds with exhaustive social welfare programs and sophisticated propaganda skills. Blanford traces the group’s secret military build-up since 2000 and reveals the stunning scope of its underground network of tunnels and bunkers, becoming the only journalist to independently discover and explore them. With the Middle East fearful of another, even more destructive war between Lebanon and Israel, Blanford tenaciously pursues Hezbollah’s post-2006 battle plans in the Lebanese mountains, earning him newspaper scoops as well as a terrifying interrogation and a night in jail.

Featuring sixteen years of probing interviews with Hezbollah’s leaders and fighters, "Warriors of God" is essential to understanding a key player in a region rocked by change and uncertainty.

Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah's Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel

The Lebanese Civil War of 1975-76 caused 80,000 dead and totally split the country along factional lines. An estimated 50 different militias came into existence, and acts of violence were both individual and collective. In the midst of this explosive atmosphere, cross-border conflict between Israel and Lebanon intensified, culminating in Operation Peace for Galilee - the invasion of Lebanon. This book offers a day-by-day account of the invasion and the subsequent siege of Beirut, an operation that resulted in both the PLO and Israel claiming victory. Numerous photographs and colour plates portray the uniforms and equipment of the Israeli, Palestinian and Multi-National forces.

Lebanon

From Beirut to Jerusalem

Thomas L. Friedman

Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon

Robert Fisk

A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered

Kamal Salibi

Lebanon: A Country in Fragments

Andrew Arsan

From Beirut to Jerusalem

Thomas L. Friedman

House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

Anthony Shadid

The Hakawati

Rabih Alameddine

The Mehlis Report

Rabee Jaber (ربيع جابر)

Tea with Hezbollah: Sitting at the Enemies' Table Our Journey Through the Middle East

Ted Dekker

June Rain

Brandon Knightley

The Tiller of Waters

Hoda Barakat

De Niro's Game

Rawi Hage

A History of Modern Lebanon

Fawwaz Traboulsi

Phoenician Secrets: Exploring the Ancient Mediterranean

Sanford Holst

Beirut, I Love You: A Memoir

Zena el Khalil

The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power

Kim Ghattas

Phoenicians: Lebanon's Epic Heritage

Sanford Holst

Superman Is an Arab: On God, Marriage, Macho Men and Other Disastrous Inventions

Joumana Haddad

An Unnecessary Woman

Rabih Alameddine

I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman

Joumana Haddad

I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

Rabih Alameddine

Koolaids: The Art of War

Rabih Alameddine

Beirut Blues

Hanan Al-Shaykh

Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East

David Hirst

The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon

Fouad Ajami

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War

Annia Ciezadlo

Jasmine and Fire: A Bittersweet Year in Beirut

Salma Abdelnour

Bye-Bye Babylon: Beirut 1975-1979

Lamia Ziadé

Gate of the Sun: Bab Al-Shams

Elias Khoury

The Conscience of Lebanon: A Political Biography of Etienne Sakr (Abu-Arz)

Mordechai Nisan

God's Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State

Nada Moumtaz

A Girl Made of Dust

Nathalie Abi-Ezzi

Black Skin, White Masks

Frantz Fanon

Sitt Marie Rose

Etel Adnan

The Story of Zahra

Hanan Al-Shaykh

The Rock of Tanios

Amin Maalouf

Waltz With Bashir: A Lebanon War Story

Ari Folman

Confessions of a Shopaholic (Shopaholic, #1)

Sophie Kinsella

For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut's Frontiers

Hiba Bou Akar

Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah's Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel