A dozen boarding school students find themselves stranded at the
beginning of the Lebanese Civil War. A young man, a young woman, and
a mistreated monkey unite in a bid to survive. Even Israel's war on
Lebanon cannot stop an old woman from getting her fix of nicotine. A
young Lebanese student on a visit to Bahrain is wrongly implicated as
a terrorist and placed in a prison with other political prisoners
where light and hope is absconding. Fresh snow compels a sacrilegious
undertaking from a father much to the shock of his children. Shared
trauma takes the shape of phantom spectrals. And in the titular
story, a hedonistic man eats himself to an early death with the
desecration of the city of Beirut forming the backdrop.
Is
This How You Eat a Watermelon? by Zein El-Amine invites readers
into a world where love, war, and trauma collide with the desire to
consume life--or be consumed by it.
