Some readers will enjoy the novel for its simple but moving prose. Its hero, Pavlov, is the antithesis of the sectarianism that destroyed one of the most progressive countries in the Middle East. On a torn-up street overlooking a cemetery in the city's Christian enclave, we meet an eccentric young man named Pavlov, the son of a local undertaker. It is 1978 in Beirut, Lebanon, partway through that country's Civil War. His new role introduces him to an unconventional cast of characters, including a father searching for his son’s body, a mysterious woman who takes up residence on Pavlov’s stairs after a bombing, and the flamboyant head of the Hellfire Society, El-Marquis.ĭeftly combining comedy with tragedy, gritty reality with surreal absurdity, Beirut Hellfire Society asks: What, after all, can be preserved in the face of certain change and imminent death? The answer is at once propulsive, elegiac, outrageous, profane, and transcendent-and a profoundly moving fable on what it means to live through war. For those who understand the civil war in Lebanon, Rawi Hage's latest novel, Beirut Hellfire Society, brings very special meaning. An explosive new novel from the award-winning, bestselling author of De Niro's Game and Cockroach. Pavlov agrees to take on his father’s work for the society, and over the course of the novel he becomes a survivor-chronicler of his embattled and fading community at the heart of Lebanon’s civil war. When his father meets a sudden and untimely death, Pavlov is approached by a colorful member of the mysterious Hellfire Society-an anti-religious sect that, among many rebellious and often salacious activities, arranges secret burial for outcasts who have been denied last rites because of their religion or sexuality. On a ravaged street overlooking a cemetery in Beirut’s Christian enclave, we meet an eccentric young man named Pavlov, the son of a local undertaker.

Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage