Cover of Beirut Blues

Beirut Blues

With the acclaim won by her first two novels, Hanan al-Shaykh established herself as the Arab world's foremost woman writer. Beirut Blues, published to similar acclaim, further confirms her place in Arabic literature, and brings her writing to a new, groundbreaking level.

Read more

The daring fragmented structure of this epistolary novel mirrors the chaos surrounding the heroine, Asmahan, as she futilely writes letters to her loved ones, to her friends, to Beirut, and to the war itself—letters of lament that are never to be answered except with their own resounding echoes. In Beirut Blues, Hanan al-Shaykh evokes a Beirut that has been seen by few, and that will never be seen again.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 384 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Beirut Blues? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Beirut Blues. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. White Masks Shares Lebanon, Middle East, fiction
  2. The Stone of Laughter Shares Middle East, Lebanon, fiction
  3. Beirut, I Love You: A Memoir Shares Lebanon, Middle East
  4. I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters Shares Lebanon, Middle East, fiction

“People who read Beirut Blues tend to reach for these next.”

  1. In the Eye of the Sun
  2. God Dies By The Nile
  3. Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories
  4. Wild Thorns

“If you want more of the same (war and military), start with these.”

  1. Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir
  2. The Last of the Angels
  3. Always Coca-Cola
  4. Girls of Riyadh

“If it was the Lebanon that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Dreams Of Water
  2. Sabra Zoo
  3. Lebanon: Death of a Nation
  4. The Hakawati

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Love from Your Friend, Hannah
  2. Polaroids
  3. Louisa May's Battle: How the Civil War Led to Little Women
  4. Bullfight