Lebanese literature from Lebanon is exquisite rich perspective of survival, history, and culture in Levant. Question-begotten sense without limits invites Lebanese writers to create identity, war, and being human in whatever literary piece they want to produce.
Lebanese writers have written all kinds of histories aside from books, poems, essays, and cartoons in ancient styles to take part in debates regarding matters of the past. The blend is a living argument between then and now. The easiest Lebanese writer to approach is perhaps Khalil Gibran, writer of bestseller classic of all time The Prophet, a book which still holds its hold. Gibran’s poetry about harmony, love, and self has inspired generations of writers and remains to extend its welcome to the world of literature.
Gibran’s work remains the zenith of Lebanese literary life, timely and responsive to authors like Hala Kamal, who curses man and society even more. Kamal’s work hides foreign and personal politics and makes the existence and life of the Lebanese woman tenuous and presents it in terms of equality and empowerment.
Rabih Alameddine is also a highly praised novelist whose novels test war, home, and love. His novel about Lebanon is an eternity universe and unexpurgated reality culled from the orally transmitted words that constitute Lebanese narrative modes. Alameddine’s novel places the reader to question the discursivity of memory and identity in an impossibly evasive socio-political reality.
Lebanese diaspora literary writers are interiorized leftovers and nationally located remains of extraterritorial presence. They narrate stories of homeness, paradox of double life, and re-creation of community and self in space of strangers. This renders such reductionist binary oppositions between homeland space and exilic space doubtful.
Evolution of the virtual worlds brought Lebanese writing communities into immediate vicinity and brought readerships across the globe within reach for writers through sites, blogs, and webzines. They enable writers to pen realistic stories, combat stereotypes, and claim their own history in an increasingly globalized world.
Lebanese literary culture is power and creativeness culture. Through repetition and re-definition of history and language within a circular discourse, Lebanese writers achieve impossible power and goodness. What they write ensures tolerance and understanding among groups, assurances of literature’s survival to endure tolerance and survive convergence. Lebanese literature is therefore assurance of the survival of fiction as world speech and practice of conversation.
