Covering over a century of tormented history, Le Roman de Beyrouth by the Lebanese author Alexandre Najjar is for me one of the most nostalgic and beautiful book dedicated to this city and its people. There is nostalgia and honest love, recognition of its failures and crying salty tears over its bounds.
´En temps de guerre, la vie est suspendue´...
War though, is present in this novel as an occurence of the daily life. More important and beautifully are the human lives, their stories of love and disappointment and beautiful human mistakes. A city who lost his Jews to the ideological takes assumed circumstantially after the end of WWII, and whose multiculturalism may apply only when it does not overcome the very borders of cultural differences.
This multi-generational novel is telling the story of the city through the encounters with a Christian/Maronite middle-class intellectual family, whose children took different stances regarding political evolutions and marriage, but it is told in the natural tone of the encounters who happen and should be taken as such. There is no fist hitting the chest in despair, but a gentle way to follow the flow of events and make the best of it - in a very intellectual, matter-of-factly matter.
This book kept me captivated for hours, but until the end, I decided to portion its lecture, splitting it in maximum 50 pages or so per day. After all, I needed to think about and chew slowly my thoughts on the political and social interpretations offered.
Alexandre Najjar is for me the voice of a Lebanon looking to get back its voice, a voice of intellectual strength and love for his country. It is an unique yet beautiful voice and would love to discover more and more such voices in the Middle East.
Rating: 4 stars
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