This reading list of luscious Lebanese literature will help you conjure up an image of this magnificent Mediterranean madhouse throughout history through brutally honest memoires, comprehensive collective histories, and poetry exploring themes of alienation, lust and an undying yet complicated love for one’s homeland.
Lebanon was, and always will be the mistress of hysteria. Lebanon was, and always will be schizophrenic.
Zena el-Khalil, Beirut, I Love You
Classic Lebanese literature and the Nahda movement
Lebanese writers Nasif al-Yazigi and Boutros al-Bustani were prominent voices of the Arab cultural revival, or Nahda (Renaissance), which emerged at the turn of the century, while Lebanese-American émigrés Amin al-Rihani and poet extraordinaire Gibran Khalil Gibran (who wrote the novel Broken Wings) paved the way for the emergence of the modern Lebanese novel.
Exemplified by the foundation of Shi’r, a magazine for experimental poetry by iconic Syrian-Lebanese poet Adunis, the second wave of the Lebanese Nahda movement unfolded.
In their prose, novelists Tawfiq Yusuf Awwad and Maroun Abboud were heavily influenced by European and Russian naturalism while others, such as Suhayl Idris, took their inspiration from the existentialist movement. Lebanese-Jewish journalist, women’s rights activist and writer Esther Moyal was also considered a key figure of the Nahda.