Wars have always acted as stimuli for writers. Mustapha Marrouchi describes the twenty-one years between 1982 (Israel's invasion of Lebanon) and 2003 (the US-led invasion of Iraq) as having witnessed ‘a single explosive development in Arabic literature’ indicating a cultural shift marked by ‘an exuberant nastiness’ and ‘a violent rush of words’ (2010: par. 2). This rupture from literary tradition, he argues, can be seen markedly in writings by several Arabic- and foreign-language Lebanese authors, both established and emergent, such as Elias Khoury, Hoda Barakat, Hanan al-Shaykh, Ghada Samman, Etel Adnan, Mai Ghoussoub, Jad el Hage, Rabih Alameddine, Patricia Sarrafian Ward and Nada Awar Jarrar (note 3). The Lebanese Civil War, which erupted on 13 April 1975, lasted for fifteen years. The Ta'if Accord of 22 October 1989 is customarily cited as the reason for the end of hostilities the following year, but there is no agreed-upon date commemorating the precise onset of the post-war period.

Like many cataclysmic events of similar scope and duration, the Lebanese Civil War inspired a generation of writers to respond artistically, in a variety of genres, to the destruction of lives, families, institutions and infrastructure. Elias Khoury believes that, paradoxically, the bloody conflict facilitated the birth of the modern experimental Lebanese novel because the protracted violence broke many social, sexual, religious and moral taboos and thus paved the way towards narrative innovation in both form and content (cited in Kacimi 2007: 15).