- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (July 1 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0385473826
- ISBN-13: 978-0385473828
- Product Dimensions: 13 x 2 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 249 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #426,089 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Al-Shaykh's third novel takes the form of a series of letters through which a woman contrasts Beirut's cosmopolitan past with its disastrous present.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
How can one respond when home becomes unrecognizable? In her third novel (following The Story of Zahra, Interlink, 1992), al-Shaykh uses the unsent letters of her narrator, Asmaran, to explore the deep sorrows and profound transformations, external and internal, brought by lingering war. As daughter, granddaughter, lover, friend, and striking woman on the street, Asmaran reveals herself as poised yet devastated, affecting yet wounded by change and constant danger. She writes long, rambling, eloquent letters to loved ones, to Beirut, and to the war itself. Through these, the reader learns of flight and family, arrack and cannabis, checkpoints, sandbags, and ruin. Episodic and densely populated, this work is confusing but tender and memorable, a well-translated glimpse into a world most American readers can little understand. Recommended for larger fiction collections.?Janet Ingraham, Worthington P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Praised far beyond its worth,
By A Customer
This review is from: Beirut Blues (Paperback)
I agree with another reviewer who called this book "long, confusing and boring". Not only did I not relate or empathise with the main character, Asmahan (an upper-class woman purposelessly travelling back and forth between Beirut and her family's country village), but I also found the description of her relationships to others (friends, lovers, family members, etc.) to be vague and insufficient. You never get to fully understand her actions and motives, much less her feelings. The book, which consists of letters written by Asmahan to such an unlikely cast of recipients as her friend Hayat, the war, Beirut and Billie Holiday (?), among others, drags on forever, without adding to your knowledge of either the characters or the political context. I finished it out of sheer stubbornness, and regret not having paid enough attention to previous reviewers. A further comment (though in all fairness not concerning the book's quality) should be made in relation to the preposterous comment on the book's front flap, which says: "With the critical and commercial success in the U.S. of her two earlier books ... Hanan al-Shaykh's standing as the Arab world's foremost woman writer has been confirmed". Are we supposed to take this seriously? I should believe that Ms. al-Shaykh's standing as an Arab female writer ought to relate to the quality of her writing first of all, and - if any commercial element must be introduced at all - then to the sales of her books in that very Arab world whose foremost novelist she is supposed to be (an assertion which this book should call into question, by the way). American arrogance has been at work here. Would great sales in Arab countries make an American writer "the U.S.'s foremost"?
1.0 out of 5 stars
Boring!,
By
This review is from: Beirut Blues (Paperback)
Long, tedious and boring with self-centered, uninteresting characters we wish would get blown up by a bomb or at least just stop writing those horrible letters. I struggled to read the whole book and wouldn't recommend anyone even start it.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Difficult to rate,
By
This review is from: Beirut Blues (Paperback)
This novel poses complex problems for the reader, and there fore I find it difficult to give either a straight positive ranking or negative one. If you are interested in understanding the inner workings of the mind of someone who is living in a war-ravaged society, then this book is excellent. But if you are reading it to understand more about Lebanon's bloody history and civil war, you won't find much here...it's really focused on the thought processes of its protagonist, Asmahan, and if you don't bring to the book existing knowledge of the place or the conflict, you won't learn anything. Therefore, I'd really recommend it only to those who know the backdrop of Lebanon's civil war.
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