Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir

A landmark memoir that stands as a testament to survival, memory, dignity, and the stubborn beauty of insisting on one's place in the world, named a 1990 New York Times Notable Book.

Jean Said Makdisi--Palestinian writer, scholar, and sister of the late critic Edward Said--has lived in Beirut since the 1970s. First published in 1990, Beirut Fragments endures as a beautifully wrought, intimate record of civilian life through Lebanon's fifteen-year civil war and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

At once clear-eyed and deeply compassionate, a portrait of everyday survival--shattered streets, sudden silences, the fragile rituals of family life--told with a storyteller's grace and emotional precision. As Jean and her husband choose to remain in their war-torn city, raising their children and teaching at local universities, she captures both the terror and the tenderness of living through catastrophe.

Amid ongoing regional violence and global patterns of displacement and erasure, Beirut Fragments offers a rare, layered perspective on identity, endurance, and the radical act of staying put when the world tries to unroot you.

Author: Jean Said Makdisi
Publisher: Outsider Editions
Published: 07/14/2026
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 7.50h x 4.90w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780385552271

About the Author
JEAN SAID MAKDISI is a Palestinian writer and scholar. She was born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian family and was raised in Cairo, Egypt, before leaving to study in the U.S. In 1972, Makdisi and her family moved from the United States, where they had lived since 1962, to Beirut, Lebanon, where she taught English and humanities at Beirut University College. They remained in Beirut throughout the Lebanese Civil War and the massive Israeli invasion of Lebanon in1982. Her observations of Beirut's decline would inform her first book, the memoir Beirut Fragments, published by Persea Books in 1990. In 2005, she published Teta, Mother, and Me, An Arab Woman's Memoir (London: Saqi Books), which was published the following year (Norton) as Teta, Mother and Me: Three Generations of Arab Women.