A handful of books help you read Beirut better — its layers, its trauma, its humour.
Pity the Nation by Robert Fisk. The British correspondent's first-hand account of the Lebanese civil war and the 1982 Israeli invasion. Long, harrowing, indispensable for understanding why Beirut looks the way it does.
De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage. A short, sharp novel about two friends growing up in East Beirut during the civil war. The prose is taut and the moral choices brutal — one of the great Beirut novels.
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine. A 72-year-old translator in a Beirut apartment looks back over a life of literature and the city's destruction. Quiet, funny, deeply Beiruti.
Beirut: An Explosive Thriller by Roger Croft and Tom Bissell's essay collection on the region are both worth dipping into for context.
A House of Many Mansions by Kamal Salibi. The clearest single-volume account of how the various Lebanese communities understand their own history — and why those stories collide.