Death in Beirut

Death in Beirut, also called The Mills of Beirut, is Tawfiq Yusuf Awwad’s second novel. The story takes place in Lebanon, years after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. It follows the heroine, Tamima Nassour, a Shia Muslim teenage girl who leaves her village of Mahdiyaa in southern Lebanon to enroll in university in Beirut. The author uses her journey to show the challenges and cultural changes faced by the Lebanese youth in the aftermath of the war and the Israeli raids on Fedayeen (Arab guerrillas). The aim of the novel is to show the cultural transformation of the modern Lebanese society. Tawfiq, who writes with great sensitivity, used his strength of having a long experience of art and life to choose the subject for this novel and capture it...