IEA

Fellowship from October 1st 2010 to February 28th 2011

Project : « The realm on this land » (Malakoutou hathihi el ard)

The story begins on the eve of the twentieth century, in the high mountains of northern Lebanon. It ends in the evening of April 13, 1975, in the capital (at the first day of the long civil war that ravaged the country). Far from being a historical novel it is the story of a family, which traces the great human adventure of the Maronite Christians from the East entrenched in their heights. Place of primitive isolation and magic place. Wild nature and myths of holiness. At the heart of the cultural Arabism and yet they remain reluctant to integrate into their regional environment.
This is neither a project of a sociological nature. I do not aim to analyze these contradictory aspects, somehow schizophrenic that "this people of mountainous rebels, belligerent devotees, irreverent, high-minded, rude, clever, wild, mischievous and naive ... Torn between East and West, between a Phoenicia declined as Syriac and a threatening Arabism through Islam, the Maronites of this mountain have known the Patriarchate but also the school of Rome, the French protectorate, but also the pan-Arab liberation of the people ... Their little world was self-sufficient until migrations towards the capital and the premises of the birth of citizenship plunged them into great perplexity.
It is the Other, should he be Maronite (competitor), Greek Orthodox, Muslim (Shiite), Palestinian or Israeli which challenges, fascinates and repels them... They had know tribal wars with their neighbors, but the 60’s and 70’s have provided new elements ...
In this context evolve the characters in this novel. The narrative will held as close as possible to small worlds, through a story, tragic and comic in the history of three generations.
Originated from this region of a misunderstood (even by itself ...) minority, feared and with suspicious condemned allegiances, beset throughout its history by internal conflicts and rivalries extending to bloody confrontations, my novel would approach a literary microcosm never explored before in its complexity ... Without passion, my text will be free of any commitment to glorify or condemn this "people". However it will be useful in the reading of the causes leading to rifts in the history of minorities, those who in the withdrawal or denial are resisting any national project that does not recognize or assume their differences and their hopes ...

Biographical elements:

Lebanese-born Hoda Barakat is one of the most original voices in modern Arabic literature. Born in 1952, she graduated from Beirut University in 1975 with a degree in French literature.

She taught for a year in al-Khaim village in southern Lebanon. After the beginning of the civil war in Lebanon in 1975, she moved to Bashara in the north. In 1975-76 she went to Paris to start a PhD but because of the civil war she decided to return to her country where she worked as a teacher, journalist and translator. In 1985 her first collection of short stories, entitled Za’irat, was published. In 1985-86 she worked at the Centre for Lebanese Research. In 1988, she helped to establish Shahrazad, a women’s magazine. She currently lives in Paris, working for an Arabic-language radio station.

All her novels (so far) have been set during the Lebanese civil war and constructed around a male figure living on the margins of society. The Stone of Laughter, which won the Al-Naqid prize, was the first Arabic novel to have a gay man as its central character. Another of her novels, The Tiller of Waters, won the Naguib Mahouz Medal for Literature.