Lebanon has fallen prey to the rapacious appetites of most of the world’s great powers – France, Ancient Egypt, Rome, Assyria, Al- exander the Great, the Arabs, Crusaders, Persians, Mamlukes and Ottoman Turks. Vestiges of all these transient civilisations are still there: Phoenician tombs and Roman temples, Gothic castles, venerable mosques and churches all jostling for attention. The Lebanese themselves bear genetic witness to this history: dozens of ethnic and religious groups coexist uneasily, hemmed in between mountains and sea, stubbornly defending their rites and traditions in a mosaic- like society where politics informs religion and vice versa. Violence, beauty, poetry, struggle, humour, an occasional example of inspiring inter-cultural harmony – and bigotry – all are reflected through these writers’ eyes.
Including: Colin Thubron, P.J. O’Rourke, William Dalrymple, Mark Twain, Gustave Flaubert, T.E. Lawrence, Mahmoud Darwish, Sir James Frazer, Ibn Battuta, Herodotus, Homer.
Lebanon has fallen prey to the rapacious appetites of most of the world’s great powers – France, Ancient Egypt, Rome, Assyria, Al- exander the Great, the Arabs, Crusaders, Persians, Mamlukes and Ottoman Turks. Vestiges of all these transient civilisations are still there: Phoenician tombs and Roman temples, Gothic castles, venerable mosques and churches all jostling for attention. The Lebanese themselves bear genetic witness to this history: dozens of ethnic and religious groups coexist uneasily, hemmed in between mountains and sea, stubbornly defending their rites and traditions in a mosaic- like society where politics informs religion and vice versa. Violence, beauty, poetry, struggle, humour, an occasional example of inspiring inter-cultural harmony – and bigotry – all are reflected through these writers’ eyes.
Including: Colin Thubron, P.J. O’Rourke, William Dalrymple, Mark Twain, Gustave Flaubert, T.E. Lawrence, Mahmoud Darwish, Sir James Frazer, Ibn Battuta, Herodotus, Homer.
Lebanon: through writers' eyes
Collected and edited by: Ted Gorton and Andree Fehali Gorton
ISBN: 978-1906011-27-7
Format: 312pp demi pb
Place: Lebanon
