Citation

Author

Context

This maze-memory like form of narrative is reminiscnet of no knives in the kitchen of this city and royaumes de cette terre. 

Summary 

Karim Chammas returns to Lebanon, his family, and his past after ten years of establishing a new life in France. Back in Beirut, Karim reacquaints himself with his brother Nasim, now married to his former love Hend, and old friends from the leftist political circles within which he once roamed under the nom de guerre Sinalcol. By the end of his six-month stay, he has been reintroduced to the chaos of cultural, religious and political battles that continue to rage in Lebanon. Overwhelmed by the experiences of his return, Karim is forced to contemplate his identity and his place in Lebanon’s history. The story of Karim and his family is born of other stories that intertwine to form an imposing fresco of Lebanese society over the past fifty years. Broken Mirrors examines the roots of an endemic civil war and a country’s unsettled past.

Khoury centers this novel on Karim, a dermatologist who’s been enmeshed in the nation’s shifting fortunes throughout the second half of the 20th century. It’s 1989, and he’s been asked by his brother, Nasim, to help start a hospital in Beirut. Karim has lived in a self-imposed exile for years in France with his wife and children, and he’s disinclined to go back, for reasons both political (a distaste for the extremist and sectarian rebels he’d interacted with) and personal (Nasim married his ex-girlfriend, for starters). Karim and Nasim have distinct personalities—upon his return, Karim muses on his various affairs, while Nasim recalls his ineptitude in various pursuits, from college to drug dealing.

Characters

Karim
Nasim - his brother
Hend - old lover

 

Themes

memory
cyclical narrative like someone's memory
male unfaithfulness

Notes

Broken Mirrors is rich with sly ironies, incisive political observations, and a cosmopolitan array of ideas and literary allusions...its narrative jumps about, swirls with overlapping stories and constantly amends itself, reflecting in form the dislocation of the civil war.

Broken Mirrors is a masterful achievement in form and style, moving us seamlessly back and forth in time, as it tells the story of Karim Shammas’ return to Beirut after a decade of living in France, and of his life before exile. It is a book which beautifully interrogates our past, our families, the cost of betrayal, and the difficult terrain of filial and romantic love, all inside the maze of human memory. Loss and the effects of war permeate the book’s consciousness, as does an awareness of how stories shape the world and of how, in actuality, our memories are part of the fields of our imaginations: they are the multi-faceted mirror by which we perceive ourselves and others.

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