Descrizione
In 1989, the civil war that has bloodied Lebanon for fifteen years enters its final year. Among the emigrants who leave the tormented country in search of a future is also the young Hoda Barakat. Years later, having rebuilt a new life with her family in Paris, the writer entrusts a series of articles published in the Arab newspaper al-Hayat between 2001 and 2002 with small glimpses of her life in exile. Thus emerge the difficult relationships with other expatriates, marked by embarrassment and shame for a country that has not been able to choose Peace; and at the same time the tenacious attachment to the thread of memories, crowded with the faces and voices of a past in which it was still possible to live in the shade of the cedars. But behind this vision painfully burdened by the inability to reconcile itself with History, Hoda Barakat lets filter through, like a seed of redemption, the intimate and original bond that unites her to her mother and daughter, in a continuous rediscovery of her own solid roots in the Lebanese people and culture. From one of the most important literary voices in the Arabic language, a series of poignant ‘spiritual reportages’ that sing the memories, regrets and hopes of an exile, far from a beloved and detested homeland, now lost forever in the rubble of war.
