Novel
The House of Mathilde
بناية ماتيلد
Hassan Daoud · 1983
Synopsis
In a building in a large city, which the reader recognises only late as Beirut, live families of diverse origins, religions and conditions, Lebanese, French, Russian, Egyptian, around Mathilde, one of the oldest residents. The nephew of the last woman still there tells, in short chapters, how the war gradually empties the building: families leave for new homes, neighbours stop greeting one another.
Context
The author's first novel, the book was published in 1983 and reissued in a revised version by Dar An-Nahar in 1999. Behind the deserted building, critics read the portrait of a dying country. Youssef Seddik translated it into French as L'Immeuble de Mathilde, for Sindbad-Actes Sud in 1999, and Peter Theroux into English, The House of Mathilde, for Granta the same year; it is among the first fictions of the Lebanese war published in English.
Who it is for
To see the Lebanese war at the scale of a building, through the daily life of neighbours whom everything ends up separating.
Prizes and reception
In 1999, Lucy Dallas praised in the Times Literary Supplement a simple yet unsettling novel.