House of Stone

House of Stone by Anthony Shadid
315 Pages


Anthony Shadid goes back to Lebanon to find his roots while restoring the house his great-grandfather had built.  We get a glimpse of a forgotten and fading past in a country that has been overshadowed by decades of war and strife.

I read this book for the Schlafly book club and the general agreement was that the writing style made it difficult to get into the book.  This may have been because Shadid was first and foremost a journalist and the two styles clashed.  What the book did capture was how the culture of Lebanon has dwindled as the Lebanese have fled the troubles of war since the collapse of the Ottoman empire following the First World war.