The Return to Beirut

By Andrée Chedid

Sybil, a twelve-year-old American, meets her grandmother, Kalya, for the first time. It is Beirut in 1975, and Lebanon is on the verge of civil war. From the window, Kalya looks out over the square where her friends Ammal and Myriam have arranged to meet. Aware of the tensions that threaten to tear the country apart, Kalya recalls a holiday she took many years ago with her own grandmother, at a time in Lebanon's history when it was possible to contemplate a radiant future. The Return to Beirut is Andr'e Chedid's hymn for a dying country. Flash-backs, memories and images of poetic beauty are richly interwoven to depict the smells, sounds and sights of a tragic land.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1852421495
• ISBN13: 9781852421496
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Length: 158 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Beautifully written novel of an unsettling time.

I suppose few North Americans are thinking about Lebanon's civil war these days, but this book is definately worth reading. It's set against the (recent) turmoil in Beirut--but is about much more than that. Its structure interweaves three stories taking place at three different times of at least 5 generations of a Lebanese family--those who emigrated and those who remained in their homeland. As the three narratives converge over the course of the novel, the reader is left with a rich sense of the impact of civil unrest on individuals, familes and the future of a country. The author is a poet, and one can easily see this in her choice of language. This is a difficult (and sometime violent) topic, but an important exploration of unrest in a "third world" country.