The Return to Beirut

by Andrée Chedid

Sybil, a young American, meets her grandmother in Beirut for the first time as Lebanon stands on the brink of civil war. Andre Chedid's hymn for a dying country uses flashbacks, memories and images to depict the smells, sights and sounds of the Lebanon before and during the conflict.

Genres: Fiction

158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Andrée Chedid was a French poet and novelist of Christian Lebanese descent.

When she was ten, she was sent to a boarding school, where she learned English and French. At fourteen, she left for Europe. She then returned to Cairo to go to an American university. Her dream was to become a dancer. She got married to a physician when she was twenty-two, with whom she has two children: Louis Chedid, now a famous French singer, and Michèle. Her work questions human condition and what links the individual to the world. Her writing seeks to evoke the Orient, but she focuses more in denouncing the civil war that destroys Lebanon. She has lived in France since 1946. Because of this diverse background, her work is truly multicultural. Her first book was written in English: On the Trails of my Fancy. She has commented about her work that it is an eternal quest for humanity.

Andrée Chedid is the grandmother of the French rock star -M- (Louis Chedid's son) for whom she has contributed song lyrics including that of Bonoboo on the album Je dis aime.

Reviews

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the the author's style very much. It reminds us all of the kindness of love and the cruelty of war.

[Benny Morduchowitz · Rating 2 out of 5]

3.4 stars. I felt the portions set in 1932 were very strong, characters and setting felt vibrant and fully realized, but the 1970s present felt half-formed and full of heavy handed symbolism and archetypal characters. Perhaps things were lost in translation, but I felt the more experimental moments in the language didn't work too well either, though it was the dichotomy between the chronology of peace/war was abundantly clear. Kalya was a wonderfully fleshed out character though, as were Nouza, Mitry, and Farid in the past, but I feel like more could have been realized by developing the characters of Myriam, Georges, and Ammal more. Even Sybil. They all seem to represent different possibilities for the future of human violence, and I wish they had been given the chance to exist as human beings rather than symbols. There are moments where Sybil and Myriam are given some attention, but not nearly enough. I'm sure the distant third-person of the novel's present was very deliberate, but I don't think that disassociation was so thematically resonant throughout those portions that it worked for the text.

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit strange, this story, in that the lead up to the climax starts on the first page and proceeds like a slow motion filmstrip through the book, while the author weaves the stories of her characters around it. And then, abruptly, it ends. The author writes like an artist paints, creating resonant images and conveying feelings that feel familiar, both in Lebanon and in Egypt, in the characters and their world, which I seem to have glimpsed enough that I recognise them while never having lived them. In contrast, the title of the book is banal.