Modern Arabic literature is all too often seen one-dimensionally as a mirror of political and social conditions. Aspects like war, trauma, memory, and - in the case of women writers - female self-assertion thus appear to be the pressing issues when examining contemporary Lebanese literature.
The Lebanese author Huda Barakat (b. 1952), who has lived in Paris since 1989, is one of the most prominent figures in Arabic literature. Densely woven and complex, her novels address a wide range of asp ...