
The Weight of Paradise
Iman Humaydan(Author)
Interlink Books (Publisher)
Published on 15. May 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-1-56656-055-9 (ISBN)
Description
While making a documentary film about the reconstruction of downtown Beirut, Maya Amer stumbles upon a battered leather suitcase that will change her life forever. Inside it she finds letters, photographs, a diary, and an envelope labeled: Letters from Istanbul. The Weight of Paradise is both the story of Maya and her discovery, and also the story of the owner of these papers, Noura Abu Sawwan, a journalist who fled Syria just before the Lebanese civil war to find greater freedom of expression. A multi-voiced, multi-genre narration, it interweaves the stories of these two women and the people who surround them within the fabric of Beirut in the civil war and its immediate aftermath. A love story as well as a story of womens liberation and political freedom, the novel is also the tale of a city and country torn apart by repression, occupation, and war.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Massachusetts
United States
Publishing group
Interlink Publishing Group, Inc
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 200 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
276 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-56656-055-9 (9781566560559)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Iman Humaydan Younes is a Lebanese novelist and freelance journalist. Her first novel Baa Mithl Beit Mithl Beirut (B for Bait for Beirut) received wide international acclaim and was translated into English, French and German. Wild Mulberries is her second novel. Her third novel, Haywat Okhra (Other Lives), will be released in Beirut in 2008 by Al Massar. Many of her short stories appeared in the cultural pages of Lebanese and Arabic newspapers and magazines such as Mulhak An Nahar, As Safir, Al Hasna’a, and Sayidati. Younes studied anthropology at the American University of Beirut. She wrote Neither Here Nor There: Narratives of the Families of the Disappeared in Lebanon and conducted and published studies on environmental and development issues of post-war Lebanon. Michelle Hartman is Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature and Language at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University. Her main area of research is Modern Arabic Literature, specializing in Lebanese women's writing. She is the translator (with Maher Barakat) of Muhammad Kamil al-Khatib's acclaimed novel Just Like a River.