My Port of Beirut – Lamia Ziadé

Beautifully illustrated, intimately personal and politically trenchant account of Beirut's catastrophic 2020 port explosion

"On the evening of August 4, 2020, an explosion tore through Beirut, leaving nearly 200 people dead, 6,000 injured, and 300,000 homeless. The blast was caused by storing thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate alongside a stash of fireworks--a deadly arrangement about which the government had known but done nothing. For six months straight, French Lebanese author and artist Lamia Ziadâe wrote, illustrated, and recorded every new piece of information, every photograph of the wreckage or the wounded. In My Port of Beirut, Ziadâe weaves together the play-by-play of the tragedy and the history of Lebanon with her own personal stories and her participation in the 2019 protests against state corruption, laying out the historical and political background that made such a catastrophe possible and, perhaps, inevitable."