War's Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War

War's Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War - Cambridge Middle East Library

Hardback (29 Jan 1988)

Save $28.89

  • RRP $114.17
  • $85.28
Add to basket

Includes delivery to the United States

10+ copies available online - Usually dispatched within 7 days

Publisher's Synopsis

This book challenges the assumption that men write of war, women of the hearth. The Lebanese war has seen the publication of many more works of fiction by women than by men. Miriam Cooke has termed these women the Beirut Decentrists, as they are decentred or excluded from both literary canon and social discourse. Although they may not share religious or political affiliation, they do share a perspective, which holds them together. The author traces the transformation in consciousness that has taken place among women who observed and recorded the progress towards chaos in Lebanon. During the so-called 'two-year' war of 1975-6 little comment was made about those (usually men in search of economic security) who left the saturnalia of violence, but with time attitudes changed. Women became aware that they had stayed out of a sense of responsibility for others and that they had survived. Consciousness of survival was catalytic: the Beirut Decentrists began to describe a society that had gone beyond the masculinisation normal in most wars and achieved an almost unprecedented fernininisation. Emigration, the expected behaviour for men before 1975, was rejected. Staying, the expected behaviour for women before 1975, became the sine qua non for Lebanese citizenship. The writings of the Beirut Decentrists offer hope of a way out of the anarchy. If men and women could espouse the Lebanese women's sense of responsibility, the energy that had fuelled the unrelenting savagery could be turned to reconstruction. But that was before the invasion of 1982.

Book information

ISBN: 9780521341929
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Pub date:
DEWEY: 892.78609
DEWEY edition: 19
Language: English
Number of pages: 208
Weight: 460g
Height: 228mm
Width: 152mm
Spine width: 22mm