On 4 August 2020, a gigantic explosion in the Beirut docks devastated much of the city and the local economy. In this powerful and beautifully written memoir, Theodore Ell writes that while opaque causes must have been at work, the event itself was ‘senseless, random and barren’. He adds that the account he had given of the disaster in his Calibre Prize-winning essay, ‘Façades of Lebanon’ (ABR, July 2021), erred in seeing the blast as ‘the climax of a narrative’. In fact, it was ‘the climax of nothing’.

Lebanon Days is an expanded and refocused version of the essay. Ell brings to memoir the skills of a published poet, a talent for the haunting vignette, and an extraordinary sensitivity to the chaotic palimpsest that is the history of this ancient place, whose modern identity resulted from a carve-up by colonial powers after World War I. (The book contains a useful Historical Timeline, together with a Glossary.)