This poetic novel is set in a neighborhood in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, and is narrated by three men: an Arabic soldier in the Lebanese National Movement; a government employee caught in the middle of the crisis; and an intelligent and idealistic young man who is also participating in the conflict. I found the narrative difficult to follow, as it was often surrealistic and at times overly repetitive, and I skimmed the last half of the book. ( )

This book takes place mainly in Beirut, during the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970’s. It does not have a typical “plot”, but rather it describes a series of incidents involving the narrator. These include some memories of his youth, before the war, some of his experiences during the war, both as a soldier and a civilian, and an encounter with an old acquaintance later on (I think), in Paris.

The main interest and real power of the book, though, comes from the style rather than from the content alone. The style changes in response to the situation the narrator is in, internally as well as external. So, in the earliest section, describing his youth and the area of Beirut he lived in, the descriptions are coherent. This is followed by repeated and slightly varying descriptions of soldiers searching his house looking for him after he had already, the reader infers, left to join a rebel group. The next section describes scenes from the war itself – running through streets, firing and being fired at, hiding in a church, comrades being injured and killed. This section is more chaotic, reflecting the chaos of war and also his confused and stressed thinking, and the remaining sections get more and more disjointed, with seemingly random thoughts, memories, hallucinations mixed together with straightforward descriptions.

But nothing in his world is straightforward anymore, and the book reflects that. Whenever the narrator tries to do something “normal” – go out to find bread, or water, or drive some friends home from a café, or park his car, or talk about the war with his friend in Paris, images and memories intervene, distorting the narrative and distancing the reader from events just as the narrator’s mind is distanced. I sometimes found it too surreal, and had difficulty understanding the allusions, but sometimes the style worked wonderfully to portray the sense of confusion and dislocation. One particularly strong short section describes the terror of walking with his wife and four small children down the four or five flights of stairs from his apartment to a shelter in the basement, in pitch dark, with shells exploding around them. Another conveys through a series of conversations and descriptions his incomprehension when his car, parked outside his house, is destroyed in the fighting – he just can’t believe no one will fix it, or pay for it, or even consider it an important event.

My knowledge of the politics of Lebanon in the ‘70’s, and of Lebanese culture in general, is very limited, so I am undoubtedly missing a lot of references that more knowledgeable readers will pick up. On the simpler level of describing how it feels to live in the middle of chaos, as an active participant or a bystander, I really did get it. The writing shows you the disintegration rather than just telling you it happened, and this is a great achievement.

Highly recommended. ( )