Anche la traduzione inglese (G. Samman, Beirut Nightmares, Quartet. Review of Ghada Samman's 'Beirut Nightmares' Beirut Nightmares, by Ghada Samman. Ghada Samman would not be who she is without addressing gender issues in the novel. Download the golden chariot or read online here in PDF. Pillars of Salt and war in Samman's Beirut Nightmares.

The fifteen-year war in Lebanon was over in 1990, and the Lebanese are still trying to remember it. They are trying to gather together the shards of that war by patching together days and dates. But in their focus on time they have overlooked the crucial role of space.

According to Robert T. (2011, 8), “The ways in which we are situated in space determine the nature and quality of our existence in the world.” The French professor Bertrand Westphal (2011, ix), the father of geocriticism, reminds us: “For a long period, time seems to have been the main coordinate of human inscription into the world. Space only a rough container.” Indeed, in the case of the Lebanese war, space was not merely a rough container but a protagonist. The Lebanese conflict, like any civil war, has redefined not only the notions of front line and war space but also the way the population, especially women, deals with intimacy in the patriarchal Lebanese society. When the war broke out in 1975, many women scattered across Beirut started to write about their own experiences. In the late 1980s the American professor miriam cooke (1996 [1987]) gave them a name, the Beirut Decentrists, thus highlighting their physical dispersal in the city. Cooke (1987, 4) explained that these women were decentered in a more intellectual way, as they “wrote in the capital but were tangential to its literary tradition.” But we must go beyond the dualistic logic of center-periphery to understand the notion of space in the Beirut Decentrists’ texts.

This essay explores the notion of third space as developed by Homi K. Bhabha (1994), Edward W. Soja (1996), and Westphal (2007).

Using tools of geocriticism, we will examine how the Beirut Decentrists’ texts engage with an urban space torn by war, allowing us to better understand the many layers underlying a topography of violence. 1 [End Page 102].

Kamennij vek v kazahstane kratko. The movement toward writing, analyzing, and promoting environmentally aware literature, which started most visibly in western academia, is fast becoming an international phenomenon such that it is only fitting to make a serious effort at incorporating non-western voices in ecocritical studies. As an Arab scholar writing and teaching in the USA, I am especially interested in advocating for the participation of Middle Eastern scholars in this emerging field that combines many scholars' universal passion and concern for literature and the natural world. The project of incorporating Arab voices, however, is a two-way street.

It requires a genuine cooperation between Arab scholars and writers who are interested in environmental scholarship and existing ecocriticism scholars, writers, and editors in the West.