Lebanon in flames reinterpreted with the novels of Mathias Énard

Beirut in the chaos after the explosions reminds us of a recent past that is only apparently dormant: the complexity of the Middle East and its beauty. Like the one described in the books of love, death and discovery of the Goncourt prize

(photo: Wikimedia Commons) The coronavirus hegemony on all newspapers and media has unfortunately been interrupted by a news if possible even worse, the tragic event which hit Beirut and Lebanon, already in crisis by the virus. And who better than the French writer Mathias Énard could tell us about those beaten and beautiful areas? Beyond the huge explosion at the port that bounced off in front of us distant spectators, the Middle Eastern country relives the nightmare of civil war and conflicts that never subsided, bordering on the one hand with tormented Syria and with the complex of Israel. The Middle East is one of those areas of choice for the French narrator, who in his books of war, love and a lot of book culture, portrays the Mediterranean as a multiple crossroads: of books, authors, myths and merciless humanity.

Back to bookstores in 2021 for E / O with the new novel The annual banquet of the brotherhood of gravediggers, focused on a lucullian rural France and the experience of an ethnologist returning to the countryside in the 21st century, his recently translated (although his first novel) La perfection del shooting (Edizioni E / O) tells of what could be identified as the civil war in Lebanon in Beirut, while keeping it unnamed in the background of a single experience.