Doha: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation published recently English translation of Beirut, Beirut: A Novel of Love and War’written by Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim.
The novel, published in 1984 and translated this month by Chip Rossetti, is a blend of journalistic and literary styles giving an insight of a foreign eye on the civil war which raged in Lebanon from 1975 1990.
Based on the writer’s real-life experience of the civil war in Lebanon, the novel is an exploration of how, even in the midst of chaos and violence, universals such as love, desire and yearning are still always our guiding forces. Sonallah Ibrahim worked as a journalist until he was arrested and imprisoned in 1959 for his political activities. QNA
