Beirut - where plastic surgery meets the emotional intensity of the legendary diva Umm Kulthum, and Lebanese foodies go on the rampage. Transit Beirut is a unique anthology of complex urban experience that brings together personal writing, essays, journalism, short stories, photography and animation. The view is wide: from fiction to documentary, and everything in between. Beirut is undergoing an energetic process of rediscovery and reinvention by its own inhabitants, many of whom are only now returning to the city. With new and established Arab writers together for the first time, Transit Beirut oscillates between sarcastic humour and serious exploration of the tensions and conflicts in a society undergoing reconstruction. Things are never what they seem; students express themselves in the language of military conquest and athletes train to 'defeat' cholesterol. Here, TE Lawrence, Orientalism and a PLO grandmother's revolutionary milk interweave ...