Sex and love as routes for border crossing and homing desire in anglophone Lebanese fiction

Abstract

This article marshals key concepts from studies of diasporic literatures and close readings of two post-civil war anglophone Lebanese novels – Koolaids: The Art of War by Rabih Alameddine and De Niro’s Game by Rawi Hage – to explain how sex and love, whether gay or straight, serve as both literary strategies and social/psychological border crossings. To do so, it examines both adolescent sexuality and love relationships in wartime Lebanon and more mature ones in western locations. It argues that, for male Lebanese characters living outside Lebanon, memories interact with diasporic realities in which sexual and amorous affairs form an essential part of their homing desire. Abroad, in multiple spaces and places, networks of physical and/or emotional liaisons generate opportunities for crossing borders-as-barriers that, in turn, help establish new feelings of being-at-home.