A01=Samira Aghacy
Arabic
Author_Samira Aghacy
Beirut
Category=DSK
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
gender
geography
literature
space
Product details
- ISBN 9781399565530
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 31 May 2026
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Exploring how writers utilise the spaces of the city – joining the factual with the imaginary – this book shows how idiosyncratic perceptions of Beirut are produced, generating an infinite number of Beiruts. The city emerges as interactive, dynamic and historical, a place that is created from the streets, buildings, and monuments as well as through performance and social interaction. By referring to factual places in Beirut, the novels produce a strong reality effect through a mimetic mode of expression. Simultaneously, these texts reveal that Beirut is an unstable locale that resists fixity and transparency, shifting between the real and imagined, and the quotidian and discursive.
Writing Beirut explores the city in 16 Arabic novels focusing on the urban/rural divide, the imagined and idealised city, the city through panoramic views and pedestrian acts, the city as sexualised and gendered, and the city as a palimpsest. While the book focuses on Beirut in Arabic novels, the introduction provides a thorough overview of Beirut in the modern Arabic novel.
Samira Aghacy is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and interim Director of the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World at the Lebanese American University. She is author of Masculine Identity in the Fiction of Arab East since 1967 (2009), and has published numerous articles on contemporary Arabic fiction. She also served for seven years (1997-2003) as editor of Al-Raida, a feminist peer-reviewed journal published by IWSAW.
