Top 10 books about Lebanon

Novelist Naji Bakhti chooses fiction, history and memoir to tell stories of a country that has weathered decades of upheaval

Many years ago, a well-meaning American friend introduced me to his favourite student pastime: a drinking game. I had just moved to London and it was my first time living outside Beirut. It's called Beirut," said my friend as he illustrated the mechanism through which a ping-pong ball would land in a pint of beer. The reason for the name, he explained, was the thumping sound the ball makes as it splashes against the lager. It was enough to make me homesick and mildly offended in equal measure.

Which is to say that Beirut, and indeed Lebanon, can be difficult to separate from the years of civil strife that so defined it for a decade and a half. Elias Khoury, Hoda Barakat, Rawi Hage, Hanan al-Shaykh and Rabih Alameddine are just some of many Lebanese authors whose work tended to be preoccupied with the civil war. My own novel, Between Beirut and the Moon, is no different in that regard. Although outside literature, in contrast, the Lebanese have been guilty of attempting to bury the past too swiftly. But enough about the war. Here is a list of books about Lebanon which do not immediately concern themselves with the civil war, except when they do.