Magazine

Magazine

Fog

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“How can one, under a splendid sun, and with intimate news / about the universe, be desperate?” writes Lebanese poet Etel Adnan in the exquisite ‘Fog’.

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Magazine

Always Coca-Cola

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‘Always Coca-Cola’, Alexandra Chreiteh’s debut novel, was described by Words Without Borders as “a razor-sharp commentary on how young women in Beirut today are buffeted by the alternately conflicting and conspiring forces of hegemony, capitalism, and patriarchy.” Abeer Ward, the novel’s narrator, belongs to overlapping and contradictory social circles: a mainstream conservative family, a circle of adventurous young friends, Beirut’s communalism, and global consumerism. In the excerpt that follows, Abeer is with her family.

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Magazine

The Smell of Soap

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In this excerpt from Elias Khoury’s previously untranslated novella, ‘The Smell of Soap’, the narrator goes to the cinema with a girl he just met. As they watch a documentary on the musician Jamil Al Haddad, the narrator fantasizes about the hours that will follow the film and also remembers his years as a member of an armed militia in Beirut.

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Magazine

180 Sunsets

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The characters in ‘180 Sunsets’ don’t belong in any way to this place called Zahraniyya where they live. They came to this place, twenty or so miles from Lebanon’s capital city Beirut, fleeing their areas of origin, because of the war, or the wars, and here they are, in houses new to them, houses being built there. All the while, they are building resentment and hatred toward each other as if, in their turn, they are getting ready for their own coming war.

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Magazine

The Bus

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Najwa Barakat’s ‘The Bus’ is the story of a group of strangers who share a long bus ride, gradually revealing their stories and their secrets. During a police inspection, the grisly discovery of a severed head on the bus prompts mutual recriminations and soul-searching. The excerpt that follows is taken from Chapter 27.

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