The interview was conducted by Rosa Gosch for Qantara, and published in October 2015

Pen Pinter prize winner Samar Yazbek talks to Rosa Gosch about her latest book, ″The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria″, the current situation in her home country and her expectations of the West.

Interview by Zahra Hankir, NOW Lebanon

NOW Lebanon: Your novel, June Rain, has received much praise. The work tackles one of the trickier aspects of the development of civil conflict in Lebanon: the 1957 rivalry in Zghorta between the Douaihy family and the Franjiehs and Mouawads which led to the Meziara church killing. Why did you choose to address these topics, specifically?
Jabbour Douaihy: As a matter of fact it was [the late journalist] Samir Kassir who gave me the idea of writing a literary novel about the background of the massacre …

(in the Belles Etrangeres 2007 press file)
In French, 3 questions to Rania Samara, Professor of literature, Paris III translator Lebanese/French

En quoi la littérature libanaise se différencie-t-elle des autres littératures arabes ?

Depuis la fin du XIXème siècle et le début du XXème siècle, la renaissance arabe, la Nahda, le Liban a été à la pointe de la littérature et de la pensée arabes grâce à la fondation à Beyrouth d’universités, de maisons d’éditions, de revues et de nombreux journaux qui ont constitué ainsi un phare pour la diffusion d’une culture …