A new novel from award-winning Lebanese writer Iman Humaydan. “Did I live many lives or only one life enough for many women?” asks Miriyam in Other Lives. This third novel by Lebanese writer, Iman Humaydan, starkly and poignantly demonstrates how war, violence and dislocation have an impact not only on the lives of people who live through them but what life itself means, particularly for women. In Other Lives, Miriyam’s travels take her from her Shouf mountain village to Beirut, Melbourne and Paradise, Australia to Nairobi, Mombasa and Cape Town. Unwilling to be tied down by geography, language or men, Miriyam forges a path through the world that is at once hers uniquely and also deeply informed by her life’s experiences. Again and again, she is drawn back to the Lebanon of her birth and childhood, only to find it no longer there. She is forced to confront the ghosts of the civil war—her dead brother, her disappeared lover, and the life that she left behind when she immigrated to Australia. Humaydan deftly explores one woman’s negotiation of love and war, intimacy and loss, migration and home in a way that speaks beyond individual but to a collective experience.
The four interlocking narratives that make up this extraordinary novel belong to four women who live in the same apartment building in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. There is Lilian with her two children, desperate to emigrate, with or without her husband. Warda cannot recover from the loss of her daughter, and finds that no matter how many times she goes over it, the story of her life no longer makes sense. Camilia has returned to Beirut to make a film about her former homeland, but becomes irrevocably caught up in its violence. Maha remains in the building even as her family, her neighbours, her city, and her country fracture around her. As the war continues each day, unending, divisions between past and present begin to break down. Younes’ intimate, haunting attention to these women’s lives creates an unforgettable portrait not only of her characters but of the nature of war. Here, loss is the city’s most constant resident, and its story will inevitably overcome all the rest.
Wild Mulberries is the story of Sarah, the adolescent daughter of a Lebanese sheikh in the 1930s.Although the area has seen financial hardship because of a sharp decline in the price of silk,Sarah’s father insists on raising silk worms. His rigid dedication to the traditional method ofsilk production angers members of the family. As a result, Sarah flees Lebanon and the pressuresof her family’s conservatism in search of a mother she’s never known. Younes provides a textured,personal window into a country on the brink of change, and a village that is holding onto its traditions despite Western influence and economic hardships.
A new novel from award-winning Lebanese writer Iman Humaydan. “Did I live many lives or only one life enough for many women?” asks Miriyam in Other Lives. This third novel by Lebanese writer, Iman Humaydan, starkly and poignantly demonstrates how war, violence and dislocation have an impact not only on the lives of people who live through them but what life itself means, particularly for women. In Other Lives, Miriyam’s travels take her from her Shouf mountain village to Beirut, Melbourne and Paradise, Australia to Nairobi, Mombasa and Cape Town. Unwilling to be tied down by geography, language or men, Miriyam forges a path through the world that is at once hers uniquely and also deeply informed by her life’s experiences. Again and again, she is drawn back to the Lebanon of her birth and childhood, only to find it no longer there. She is forced to confront the ghosts of the civil war—her dead brother, her disappeared lover, and the life that she left behind when she immigrated to Australia. Humaydan deftly explores one woman’s negotiation of love and war, intimacy and loss, migration and home in a way that speaks beyond individual but to a collective experience.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.