"I Live" by Lebanese author Layla Baalbaki was published in 1958. A few years after, she was put on trial for insulting public morality and mostly disappeared from the literary scene, with little appearances here and there. Sounds like there must be something really engaging and controversial in her work, right? Unfortunately, almost sixty years later, the banality and mediocrity of this work is all that shines through. Maybe I'm being over unappreciative of the novel, but the tale of "Lina", a whiny, insecure rich girl who meanders her way through what I assume to be paranoid schizophrenic visions and sexual exploration with political radicals did not make for a very interesting tale. Insanely, I only picked this up because the Arab Writers Union rank this #17 in their top 100 Arabic novels. Might have some use for gender study people, maybe?