Description
Keynote
On August 4 2020, a huge explosion in the heart of Beirut killed hundreds of people –
it is the apocalypse of a sequence of events that have led to Lebanon’s
unprecedented collapse. Journalist Dalal Mawad has interviewed tens of Lebanese
and foreign women - victims of the explosion, and those stuck in Lebanon - and
weaves an extraordinary story of survival, corruption and impunity.
Description
‘Poignant and compelling… will resonate with anyone who cares about justice and
the abuse of power’ Lindsey
Hilsum, Channel 4 News International Editor and author
of Sandstorm
'Essential and urgent' - Kim Ghattas, journalist and author of Black Wave
Lebanon and the wider Middle East is in crisis. For this extraordinary book, journalist
Dalal Mawad conducted a series of searing interviews with women in Lebanon -
weaving an extraordinary story of survival, corruption and impunity.
On August 4 2020, a huge explosion in the heart of Beirut killed hundreds of people – it
was the apocalypse of a sequence of events that have led to Lebanon’s unprecedented
collapse. Award-winning journalist Dalal Mawad was in Lebanon when the blast
happened, and was one of the first journalists to report on the mysterious and
devastating explosion.
During her reporting, she discovered something else – that it is the women who stay
behind, and it is through their stories that the history of the Middle East must be reconstructed.
She set out to record the stories of those she met, the women long
discriminated against, and those whose stories are untold.
She spoke to mothers who lost their children, spouses who lost their partners, refugee
women who have fled from the war in Syria – and who now find themselves in another
failing state. We hear from the Lebanese grandmother, bankrupted by the small nation's
collapse, who remembers Beirut’s glory days of the 1960s – when the likes of Brigitte
Bardot and Miles Davis came to Beirut. And then the women like Dalal herself, who have
left their home behind.
The women in this book all experienced the explosion and suffered unimaginable loss
and tragedy, but it is not just this one event that brings them together. Their personal
stories converged to tell the story of a nation whose glory days are long gone, now riven
by protracted violence, lurching from crisis to crisis, and fighting to survive. It tells not
only of what these women have lost, but also what Lebanon has lost, and a part of the
Middle East that is no more.
