Gendering Civil War : Francophone Women’s Writing in Lebanon

Abstract

Provides a new and original analysis on how Lebanese francophone women authors wrote about the Lebanese civil war

• The first book to study the intersection between narrative studies or narratology, trauma and gender in the context of non-western literature

• Examines Lebanese francophone novels by first- and second-generation women writers from the 1970s to today

• Explores novels that have never been studied before or received very little attention

• Offers in-depth analysis of theories and literary analysis

• Advances new theories on the body, narratology, and trauma

Writers in contemporary Lebanon stand at the crossroads of challenging and often violent dynamics in a multi-ethnic postcolonial society where competing cultural and political forces present specific and pressing problems for women. This book examines French-language narratives published between the 1970s and the present day by Lebanese women writers focusing on the civil war of 1975-1991. Drawing on a corpus of writings by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, Etel Adnan, Evelyne Accad, Andrée Chedid, Hyam Yared, and Georgia Makhlouf, some of which has previously received little or no scholarly attention, the book examines in innovative ways the use of distinctive narrative forms to address inter-linked questions of violence, war trauma, and gender relations.