Beyrouth n'est pas loin. Les espaces urbains palpables et imapalpables dans 'Sous le ciel de l'Occident’ de Ghassan Fawaz
Beirut is near. Visible and invisible urban spaces in Ghassan Fawaz’s ’Under the Western Sun’

Summary/Abstract: Under the Western sun is a long monologue where the Lebanese war is becoming a powerful narrative trigger, revealing the causes and phantasms besieging the two characters: Untel and Mehmed. It is not really the story of a conflict. It is not either another novel about Beirut, but only pieces of the Lebanese mosaic breaking out like an exploding shell. Untel and Mehmed are two Lebanese leftist students, living in Paris at the Cité Internationale, for their Doctorate diplomas. On one side they express their feelings about exile, being torn apart or losing some of their illusions and on the other side enjoying thoroughly the dimensions and variations (freedom) of Parisian student life. This chaotic and exhilarating novel is far from being only a tale (story) and even further of the art of building up a plot or creating new characters, because it rather builds up spaces which become the organizers of the scheme. Paris on one side, Beirut on the other side, just as a pattern on a rug. This dualism can be noticed under several aspects: eros and pathos, labyrinth and lay out, distance and closeness, order and disorder, love and hate, war and peace, lucidity and madness, present and ‘flash back’.

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