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Mai Ghoussoub: Selected Writings
Mai Ghoussoub was a woman who lived with one foot in the East and one in the West, who embodied cosmopolitanism, and who was deeply committed to freedom of expression.
Drawing on her own extraordinary experiences as well as on political and historical events, this collection brings together for the first time some of her finest writings – on war, politics, sexism, martyrdom, the arts, censorship, exile and the city. Essays sit alongside short stories, poetry, plays and letters, all enlivened with her signature humour and enduring compassion.
Whether she’s extolling the pleasures of cooking or defying political hypocrisy, her voice – always clear and true – restores our faith in humanity.
Mai Ghoussoub, artist, author and playwright, left Beirut for London in 1979, where she co-founded Saqi. Her art has been exhibited internationally, and her play Texterminators was performed in London, Liverpool and Beirut in 2006. Her many publications include Leaving Beirut, Imagined Masculinities, with Emma Sinclair-Webb, and Artists and Vitrines, with Shaheen Merali. Her stories have appeared in Hikayat: Short Stories by Lebanese Women and Lebanon, Lebanon. She was a regular contributor to al-Hayat and openDemocracy.
Drawing on her own extraordinary experiences as well as on political and historical events, this collection brings together for the first time some of her finest writings – on war, politics, sexism, martyrdom, the arts, censorship, exile and the city. Essays sit alongside short stories, poetry, plays and letters, all enlivened with her signature humour and enduring compassion.
Whether she’s extolling the pleasures of cooking or defying political hypocrisy, her voice – always clear and true – restores our faith in humanity.
Mai Ghoussoub, artist, author and playwright, left Beirut for London in 1979, where she co-founded Saqi. Her art has been exhibited internationally, and her play Texterminators was performed in London, Liverpool and Beirut in 2006. Her many publications include Leaving Beirut, Imagined Masculinities, with Emma Sinclair-Webb, and Artists and Vitrines, with Shaheen Merali. Her stories have appeared in Hikayat: Short Stories by Lebanese Women and Lebanon, Lebanon. She was a regular contributor to al-Hayat and openDemocracy.
- GenresNonfictionBiography
266 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2008
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37 people want to read
About the author
Mai Ghoussoub
5 books8 followersGhoussoub was born in Beiruit, where her father, Raymond Ghoussoub, a Maronite Christian Arab, was a professional footballer. She studied at the French lycée in Beirut, then math at the American University of Beirut and French literature at the Lebanese University, and later sculpture at Morley College and the Henry Moore Studio in London.
She was a Trotskyite at the start of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, but soon became disillusioned and moved on to humanitarian work, establishing two medical dispensaries in a poor Muslim area after the doctors had left and the pharmacies had closed.
She lost an eye in 1977, after her car was hit by a shell while taking someone to hospital. She moved to London to be treated, and spent time in Paris, where she worked as a journalist for Arab newspapers. She wrote Comprendre le Liban with her childhood friend André Gaspard, under the pseudonyms Selim Accaoui and Magida Salman.
In 1979, she founded the Al Saqi bookshop in Westbourne Grove, London, with Gaspard, the first London bookshop to specialise in Arabic works. They began to publish works in Arabic in 1983. They sold the Serpent's Tail imprint to Pete Ayrton in 1987, but continued with the Saqi and Telegram imprints. An Arabic publishing house, Dar al-Saqi, was founded in Beirut in 1990.
She was a feminist, publishing works on a range of controversial issues and producing challenging artistic installations. She married twice. She married the Lebanese writer Hazem Saghieh in 1991.
Her autobiographical book, Leaving Beirut: women and the wars within, was published in 1998. She was passionately opposed to censorship, arguing in her 2006 play Texterminators, performed at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith and Dominion Theatre in London, the Unity Theatre, Liverpool, and the Marignan Theatre in Beirut, that "Words don't kill; humans do."
She was a Trotskyite at the start of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, but soon became disillusioned and moved on to humanitarian work, establishing two medical dispensaries in a poor Muslim area after the doctors had left and the pharmacies had closed.
She lost an eye in 1977, after her car was hit by a shell while taking someone to hospital. She moved to London to be treated, and spent time in Paris, where she worked as a journalist for Arab newspapers. She wrote Comprendre le Liban with her childhood friend André Gaspard, under the pseudonyms Selim Accaoui and Magida Salman.
In 1979, she founded the Al Saqi bookshop in Westbourne Grove, London, with Gaspard, the first London bookshop to specialise in Arabic works. They began to publish works in Arabic in 1983. They sold the Serpent's Tail imprint to Pete Ayrton in 1987, but continued with the Saqi and Telegram imprints. An Arabic publishing house, Dar al-Saqi, was founded in Beirut in 1990.
She was a feminist, publishing works on a range of controversial issues and producing challenging artistic installations. She married twice. She married the Lebanese writer Hazem Saghieh in 1991.
Her autobiographical book, Leaving Beirut: women and the wars within, was published in 1998. She was passionately opposed to censorship, arguing in her 2006 play Texterminators, performed at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith and Dominion Theatre in London, the Unity Theatre, Liverpool, and the Marignan Theatre in Beirut, that "Words don't kill; humans do."
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 23, 2024
I enjoyed the essays on art, literature and reading most of all. The essays on writers whose work she had published were also good. I kind of ran out of steam in the middle but the last essay was redeeming. Also very poignant right now to read her thoughts on Lebanon after 2006 or was it 1996?
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