A THOUSAND ORIGINS

CHARIF MAJDALANI

(BAYARD, 240 pages, 2023)

 Beirut through the sensitive eyes of a great writer.

• A choral book on multiculturalism in the heart of the emblematic city of Beirut.

• An inspiring and necessary read to grasp the current situation in Lebanon

• Nominated for the Narrative Non Fiction Book Prize 2023

On his return home from a far-flung trip, Charif Majdalani sets off to meet some twenty people who tell him about their backgrounds and family histories. Told in the first person, these stories embody lives of exile, migration, wars, identity and thwarted love affairs. Stories like Rawwad’s, a Christian boy, top of his class in catechism, who learns with great dismay from the principal of his school that he is Muslim through his father and Jewish through his grandmother. Or Jenny’s, a Filipino cleaning lady turned beautician, who is saddened to realize too late that nothing has replaced her presence with her daughters back home. Or Marylin’s, who hopes to run into her former lover in the streets of Singapore, far from her disapproving Lebanese family, before daring to couple up with him and have a child. 

In a literary prose, reminiscent of Svetlana Alexievitch’s distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, A Thousand Origins weaves together the honest and affective voices of ordinary women and men. These fictional yet based on real life stories reveal the depth, humor and complexity of the multiple identities that make up our common humanity.

 
Charif Majdalani was born in Lebanon in 1960 and is one of the most eminent figures in Lebanese literature today. He lived in France for thirteen years and has returned to Lebanon where he teaches French literature at the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut.