Hoda Barakat

Hoda Barakat is a Lebanese novelist who spent most of her early life in Beirut and now lives in Paris. She writes in Arabic and has published six novels, two plays, a book of short stories and a book of memoirs, including The Stone of Laughter and The Tiller of Waters. Her fiction often explores trauma and war, and three of her early novels are narrated by men living on the margins of society during the Lebanese civil war.