Beirut, Imagining the City: Space and Place in Lebanese Literature Contributor(s): Hayek, Ghenwa (Author) |
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ISBN: 1784530158 ISBN-13: 9781784530150 Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC OUR PRICE: $173.25 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: December 2014 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Middle Eastern |
Dewey: 892.709 |
LCCN: 2016387245 |
Series: Written Culture and Identity |
Physical Information: 1.2" H x 5.6" W x 8.5" (1.15 lbs) 288 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - Middle East |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Beirut is the cultural, commercial and economic hub of Lebanon. But to what extent has the city affected and shaped the formation and perceptions of Lebanese national identity? Ghenwa Hayek here explores how anxieties over the past, present and future of Beirut have been articulated through a sense of dislocation present in Lebanese writing since the 1960s. Drawing on theories of cultural studies, geography and history, the author uses an interdisciplinary framework to explore the role that spaces - from rural to urban - have played and continue to play in the defining, and re-defining, of national identity in the seventy years since the creation of the Lebanese nation state. This theoretical perspective coupled with a close reading of little-explored contemporary writings lead Hayek to question the predominant assumption that Lebanese novelists only became engaged in discourses about place identity and individual and social belonging with the start of the fifteen-year civil war and the destruction of Beirut's city centre. |