Michelle Hartman

Magazine

Always Coca-Cola

By

‘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.

Read More
Magazine

The Curse

By , ,

Hyam Yared’s ‘The Curse’ (La Malédiction), is the story of Hala, a young Lebanese woman born in 1970s Beirut who is stifled by her Catholic-school upbringing, coming of age while the country is under threat of Syrian invasion. This excerpt comes from pages 121-124 of the novel.

Read More
Magazine

Other Lives

By , ,

Mariam, a Lebanese Druze who has moved with her English husband to Kenya, returns for a brief stay in Beirut, the hometown she left fifteen years before. There, she must settle accounts of the past, take care of the house to which she is the sole heir since the death of her husband’s brother during the civil war, and revisit family history.

Read More