- Published: 03/05/2012
- ISBN: 9781847087379
- Granta Books
- 336 pages
House of Stone
Anthony Shadid
In spring 2011, Anthony Shadid was one of four New York Times reporters captured in Libya, cuffed and beaten, as that country was seized by revolution. When he was freed, he went home. Not to Boston or Beirut where he lived or to Oklahoma City, where his Lebanese-American family had settled. Instead, he returned to his great-grandfather’s estate in Lebanon, a house that, over three years earlier, Shadid had begun to rebuild. House of Stone is the story of a battle-scarred home and a war correspondent’s jostled spirit, and of how reconstructing the one came to fortify the other. Shadid creates a mosaic of past and present, tracing the house’s renewal alongside his family’s flight from Lebanon and resettlement in America. He memorializes a lost world and provides profound insights into this volatile landscape. House of Stone is an unforgettable meditation on war, exile, rebirth and the universal yearning for home.
£9.99
Six pages into this book, I said to myself, if Shadid continues like this, this book will be a classic. And page by page, he did continue
Dave Eggers, author, Zeitoun
There is not space here to set out all of this book's many rewards... The prose is ripe, the biblical landscapes vividly rendered... Profound, insightful, tragic and funny... House of Stone will stand a long time, for those fortunate enough to read it
Ed Loughlin, Daily Telegraph
The insights into life in war-ravaged southern Lebanon make for a powerful read, at once a personal memoir and a sweeping regional analysis
Josh Glancey, Sunday Times
Anthony Shadid on Granta.com
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
What Silence Knows
Anthony Shadid
‘Words can’t quite re-create the smell of war. I have found myself trying to wash it out of my hair, off my fingers. More than once, I have run water over the soles of my shoes.’
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
Home: Reflections for Anthony Shadid
Various Contributors
‘I realize it is my fault: whenever I live in any country, everything turns wrong. I see it as a gift.’
In Conversation | The Online Edition
Anthony Shadid | Interview
Anthony Shadid & Ted Hodgkinson
‘It’s very difficult to say what kind of Iraq is going to emerge from this trauma. I think we have to wait a generation.’