Title: The Lebanese post-civil war novel : memory, trauma, and capital /
Authors: Lang, Felix, 1985-
Year: 2016
Subjects: Arabic fiction Lebanon History and criticism.; War in literature.; Collective memory in literature; Psychic trauma in literature.; Lebanese fiction (French) History and criticism.; LITERARY CRITICISM / General.; LITERARY CRITICISM / European / General.; LITERARY CRITICISM / Middle Eastern.; Arabic fiction; Collective memory in literature.; Lebanese fiction (French); Psychic trauma in literature.; War and literature; War in literature.; Lebanon History Literature and the war.; Lebanon
Abstract: "After the Lebanese Civil War, many of Lebanon's best known novelists committed themselves to building a "memory for the future." More than twenty years later, Elias Khoury's and Rashid al-Daif's postwar novels rank among the most important texts in contemporary Arabic literature and a new generation of authors has begun writing about the civil war. The role of collective and individual trauma seems to be central to this development. However, as this book will show, the Lebanese Post-civil war novel is a response not so much to trauma, but to the forces at work in the literary field. From the book market to literary prizes and the similarity of the writers' biographies and socio-economic backgrounds, a number of factors worked in favor of novels offering a literary war narrative for Lebanon's secular upper-middle class"--
Contents: Introduction -- PART I: THE LEBANESE LITERARY FIELD -- 1. Newspapers, Prizes and Politics: The Field's Institutions and the Global and Regional Context -- 2. The Values of the Field: What Makes a Good Novel in Lebanon? -- PART II: "WE'RE ALL IN THE DARK" -- THE FIRST GENERATION OF (POST)WAR AUTHORS -- 3. The Civil War Novel and the Break with Tradition -- 4. Revolutionaries Turned Writers: A Secular Left-Wing Habitus -- 5. Destruction and Deconstruction: Forms of Literary Remembering -- PART III: GHOSTS IN THE ARCHIVE -- THE SECOND GENERATION OF POSTWAR AUTHORS -- 6. The Civil War Novel as Gateway to the Literary Field -- 7. Humanist Commitment: A New Habitus -- 8. Archive, Trauma and Reconstruction: New Forms of Literary Remembering -- Conclusion: Whose Truth, Whose Power? -- Appendix A: List of Authors -- Appendix B: List of Novels.