Post-War Anglophone Lebanese FictionHome Matters in the Diaspora

In Postwar Anglophone Lebanese Fiction, Hout delivers a pioneering work of scholarship of what she presciently foresees becoming “a fuller-fledged variant of diasporic Lebanese literature” (p. 11). During a period where transnational Arab literature is still more commonly grouped under the country of relocation (for example, Arab American/Arab Canadian), Hout importantly offers new possibilities for analytical distinction. Her qualification of how these authors’ works resist official, amnesiac Lebanese policy regarding remembering and commemoration of the civil war also reveals an important political purpose for the literature under analysis... An interdisciplinary study that offers a fresh analysis of the works of several individually celebrated authors, Postwar Anglophone Lebanese Fiction reveals new pathways of interpretation, and for scholarship more broadly.'

For both the generalist and the specialist reader, Hout’s text offers a fine overview of the central themes in Lebanese diaspora writing. At its core, it provides a powerful argument for why we need to be reading these rich if often dark novels.

It is destined for the syllabi of university literature courses from here to Sydney, London, Los Angeles and Montreal. Cheer for those students ... They have a solid piece of scholarly research to support and sustain their reading....Hout admirably lays out the landscape of several disciplinary fields and academic eras, which is again a gift to future students. She is at her best, however, on the explosive style and content of the novels (and short story collections) themselves.

With this clearly argued and critically nuanced study Syrine Hout presents her readers with a thought-provoking analysis of contributions to an emerging literary phenomenon, fictions by writers of Lebanese origin penned in English. This is an important addition to the ever growing library of critical studies devoted to fiction of English expression written by that most oxymoronic of categories, the insider outside.