Samir Skayni

This study follows the trajectory of the “atrocious” as it manifests in contemporary society, tracing it from its eruption and spread during the civil war in Lebanon to its recalling in the present time of collapse. The project is a crossover between a journalistic, historical, and theoretical study, with some novel features. It engages testimonies and oral histories, literature of war and peace in Lebanon, as well as contributions by other writers. The project’s main contribution is not its review of the war, but the vantage point it adopts to look at history and the present. Namely, the perspective of someone writing about this period from the outside, not as a witness of war, but as someone living in Lebanon in the present and witnessing the atrocities, massacres, collapses, and revolutions happening in close proximity. The generational standpoint is central to this approach. As such, the book reviews a past massacre while trying to anticipate an imminent one.