Beirut Hellfire Society: A Novel

On a ravaged street overlooking a cemetery in Beiruts Christian enclave, we meet an eccentric young man named Pavlov, the son of a local undertaker. When his father meets a sudden and untimely death, Pavlov is approached by a colorful member of the mysterious Hellfire Societyan anti-religious sect that, among many rebellious and often salacious activities, arranges secret burial for outcasts who have been denied last rites because of their religion or sexuality.

Pavlov agrees to take on his fathers work for the society, and over the course of the novel he becomes a survivor-chronicler of his embattled and fading community at the heart of Lebanons civil war. His new role introduces him to an unconventional cast of characters, including a father searching for his sons body, a mysterious woman who takes up residence on Pavlovs stairs after a bombing, and the flamboyant head of the Hellfire Society, El-Marquis.

Deftly combining comedy with tragedy, gritty reality with surreal absurdity, Beirut Hellfire Society asks: What, after all, can be preserved in the face of certain change and imminent death? The answer is at once propulsive, elegiac, outrageous, profane, and transcendentand a profoundly moving fable on what it means to live through war.