An Unnecessary Woman

"An Unnecessary Woman is a story about Beirut, but not the Beirut you see in headlines. Told in the voice of a reclusive older woman, it unfolds within the confines of her small apartment. Her family has forgotten her, she is childless and divorced, and all around her are books that she slowly translates into Arabic. It is a quiet book about a lost woman in a loud, violent city. We see the Lebanese civil war through her memories. It’s also a book about literature, and a portrait of a woman living in a volatile time, who shuts out reality and loses herself in the written word until she reaches a breaking point."