"Lebanon has fallen prey to the rapacious appetites of most of the world's great powers - France, Ancient Egypt, Rome, Assyria, Alexander the Great, the Arabs, Crusaders, Persians, Mamlukes and Ottoman Turks. Vestiges of all these transient civilisations are still there: Phoenician tombs and Roman temples, Gothic castles, venerable mosques and churches all jostling for attention. The Lebanese themselves bear genetic witness to this history: dozens of ethnic and religious groups coexist uneasily, hemmed in between mountains and sea, stubbornly defending their rites and traditions in a mosaic-like society where politics informs religion and vice versa. Violence, beauty, poetry, struggle, humour, an occasional example of inspiring inter-cultural harmony - and bigotry - all are reflected through these writers' eyes."--Jacket.