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House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

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“Evocative and beautifully written, House of Stone . . . should be read by anyone who wishes to understand the agonies and hopes of the Middle East.” — Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and author of Crossing Mandelbaum Gate

“In rebuilding his family home in southern Lebanon, Shadid commits an extraordinarily generous act of restoration for his wounded land, and for us all.” — Annia Ciezadlo, author of Day of Honey

In spring 2011, Anthony Shadid was one of four New York Times reporters captured in Libya, cuffed and beaten, as that country was seized by revolution. When he was freed, he went home. Not to Boston or Beirut—where he lives— or to Oklahoma City, where his Lebanese-American family had settled and where he was raised. Instead, he returned to his great-grandfather’s estate, a house that, over three years earlier, Shadid had begun to rebuild.

House of Stone is the story of a battle-scarred home and a war correspondent’s jostled spirit, and of how reconstructing the one came to fortify the other. In this poignant and resonant memoir, the author of the award-winning Night Draws Near creates a mosaic of past and present, tracing the house’s renewal alongside his family’s flight from Lebanon and resettlement in America. In the process, Shadid memorializes a lost world, documents the shifting Middle East, and provides profound insights into this volatile landscape. House of Stone is an unforgettable meditation on war, exile, rebirth, and the universal yearning for home.

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

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About the author

Anthony Shadid

9 books46 followers
Anthony Shadid was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. Until December 2009, he served as the Baghdad bureau chief of the Washington Post. Over a 15-year career, he reported from most countries in the Middle East.

Shadid won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2004 for his coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the occupation that followed. He won the Pulitzer Prize again in 2010 for his coverage of Iraq as the United States began its withdrawal. In 2007, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Lebanon. He has also received the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ award for deadline writing (2004), the Overseas Press Club’s Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper or wire service reporting from abroad (2004) and the George Polk Award for foreign reporting (2003).

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 385 reviews
Profile Image for Dave Cullen.
Author 8 books61.4k followers
February 16, 2013
So much about this book to love.

It's only the third book I've ever agreed to blurb. That tells you how much I loved it.

My blurb (and I wrote it myself, and meant every word):

“I was captivated, instantly, by Anthony Shadid’s lushly evocative prose. Crumbling Ottoman outposts, doomed pashas, and roving bandits feel immediate, familiar, and relevant. Lose yourself in these pages, where empires linger, grandparents wander, and a battered Lebanon beckons us home. Savor it all. If Márquez had explored nonfiction, Macondo would feel as real as Marjayoun.”

Reading it sometimes made me feel inadequate as a writer. I wish I could do some of the amazing things he does. Or maybe I wish I could do them so relentlessly. I tend to underline phrases I love, and the pages are covered in ink. Every other sentence leaps out at me. Hard to believe.

Reading it sometimes made me feel inadequate as a writer. I wish I could do some of the amazing things he does. Or maybe I wish I could do them so relentlessly. I tend to underline phrases I love, and the pages are covered in ink. Every other sentence leaps out at me. Hard to believe anyone can be that consistent. Faulkner, Nabokov, Denis Johnson and William Lychak are the only ones who have matched Anthony's underline rate for me.

Update, Feb 2013:

A year later, I still think about this book, and the impact it had on me. Beautiful.
Profile Image for Quo.
300 reviews
May 17, 2021
Anthony Shadid's House of Stone seems an extraordinary tale of one man's quest to make sense of a chaotic part of the world, while at the same time dealing with chaos within his own life following the end of his marriage. There are times when Shadid's personal quest seems almost an obsession but at 2nd glance, he is not just tilting at a windmill in the Levant but attempting to give his own life a sense of purpose, while making a positive contribution to a much-diminished town in Lebanon.



The town & this part of the world was once a thriving crossroads during the heady days of the Ottoman Empire, with Anthony Hadid thereby reconstructing a monument to several generations of his own family, most of whom have long since taken refuge in America & other ports around the world. The resurrection & reformation of a once proud house in Marjayoun, built by Shadid's great grandfather, Isber Samera, thus serves to establish meaning on many levels.

The transition from a run-down building on the edge of formerly thriving town is not without numerous mishaps and a learning curve that embraces all sorts of local, fractious artisans, many of whom are at cross purposes with each other & rather mistrusting of the author's grand vision. However, the process of reconstruction of the old home & particularly the implementation of "cementos", concrete tiles that are a symbol of this part of the Middle East, provide additional meaning to the renovation project.



In the author's own words:
Cultures that may seem as durable as stone can break like glass, leaving all the things that held them together unattended. I believe that the various craftsmen, artists, silversmiths & even cooks are peacemakers who instill grace & lull the world to calm. The tiles at my feet were the remnants of a lost Marjayoun & were artifacts of an ideal, meant to remind & to inspire, vestiges of an irretrievable Levant, a world that calls to mind an older, more tolerant, more indulgent Middle East.
At one time, during the Ottoman Empire, prior to WWI and before foreign powers arbitrarily demarcated the boundaries of 5 states of uncertain identity--Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria & Transjordan, it seems that this area was "an amalgamation of diversities, where many mingled, a realm of intersection, a crossroads of language, culture, religions & traditions."

There are many passages in Anthony Shadid's book that seem quite lyrical and particularly when he details the various ethnic, religious, cultural & linguistic differences that separate those who remain and struggle for a new identity in today's Lebanon. An area once known for its pluralism & tolerance is now beset with...
almost tribal divisions, with each group now demarcated by colors, banners, portraits of conflicts, all of them abbreviations of reason, with deluded notions of supremacy, with church & nation falling impossibly together.




Shadid comments that "everything in war becomes personal. Behind today's skirmish or bombing lies an event that happened to a family yesterday or decades ago, causing everyone to feel exiled from each part of their life."

When this occurs, nothing is home again, a notion that runs contrary to the author's attempt to rebuild an ancestral home ("baym" in Arabic), a place with a deep connection to his own life. Shadid's dedication to & perseverance on behalf of the renewal of the old building in Marjayoun, Lebanon is ultimately successful and I suspect served as a catharsis for the author as well, though his life came to a tragic end not long after the completion of the book.

House of Stone may not be for everyone but some of the writing reminded me of another journalist's work, Thomas Friedman's excellent books & especially From Beirut to Jerusalem, also attempting to provide political & historical insight into this long-troubled part of the world. Anthony Shadid was a very gifted writer & like Thomas Friedman, wrote for the The New York Times, with both being awarded Pulitzer Prizes, though Shadid had the additional distinction of being shot by an Israeli soldier while covering the Middle East.

I found this book quite uplifting, even at times humorous and was very moved by the late author's personal quest for meaning in Lebanon and within his own life as well.

*Within my review are 3 images of the late Anthony Shadid, including one in the midst of the House of Stone's revitalization & the last (with his young son) when completed.
Profile Image for Catherine.
663 reviews3 followers
April 6, 2012
Shadid was a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, and his posthumous memoir has been promoted on several TV shows and web sites. I was really looking forward to delving into his book.

I’m so sad to say that this was a slog from start to finish. The book is partially about the renovation of his ancestor’s home in Lebanon. That portion of the story was typical of so many others I’ve read, full of construction delays, eccentric characters, and discovering “home.” But there was nothing really unique. For me, most of the characters, with only a few exceptions (Dr. Khairalla and perhaps—and I’m being generous—Abu Jean), just weren’t interesting enough to include.

Another part of the story was not only his family’s history but also Middle Eastern history. Perhaps he should have stayed strictly to his family’s history. The history, while informative, strayed a bit from the book being a personal memoir.

I kept thinking as days passed and I still hadn’t finished the book that perhaps the author was just too close to the material, unable to edit himself in a way that made the stories more intriguing. He thanked his editor at the end of the book. But I have to say that had the editor done a better job of actually editing the text, taking out unnecessary overly worded descriptions, perhaps the book would have read more like a heartfelt, soulful reflection of the author’s memories. Instead there seemed to be too much fretting over the writing. Words can be beautiful and descriptive and lovely, but in this case, for me, it became too much of a good thing.

The Epilogue was the best chapter by far. Had the entire book read like that section, I believe I would have enjoyed the book much more.
Profile Image for Sue.
1,307 reviews577 followers
April 29, 2013
As I read, I found myself falling into the rhythm of this book--the stumbling attempt to rebuild an old house, the current state of Lebanon and surrounding countries, and the history of the Levant and how the open, multicultural area became a political firestorm. I found the history and current information fascinating as I really had only a superficial understanding of the historical events and little understanding of their impact on the people who lived there, people of such diverse cultures, prior to reading this book.

I also enjoyed seeing Shadid try to work with people who sometimes viewed him as the "rich American" or powerful newspaperman when he appears more to be a man running from his personal ghosts.

Lebanon in this new millennium still suffers from the many problems that began in the early 20th century when British and French created artificial territories in what had been an open multicultural trading area for hundreds of years. This was an outgrowth of the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Lebanon became one of these new "countries". Shadid's family hailed from Marjayoun, what had a formerly been an important town. These new borders altered so much. His quest becomes to rebuild his great-great-grandfather's home and along the way he teaches us about his family, and Lebanon, then and now.


"My aunts and uncles, grandparents and great grandparents
were part of a century-long wave of migration that occurred
as the Ottoman Empire crumbled then fell, around the time
of World War I. In the hinterland of what was was then
part of Greater Syria...the war marked years of violent
anarchy that made bloodshed casual. Disease was rife. So was
famine, created by the British and French, who enforced
a blockade of all Arab ports in the Mediterranean. Hundreds
of thousands starved to death in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine,
and beyond." (loc 114)


Shadid is returning to the ancestral home from which his family, all but the great great grandfather Isber and his wife, had left. The complexity of the terrain is obvious from his description of the area.


"Marjayoun is set on a plateau of muted and melded grays
browns, and greens, blended in harmony with the land's past.
..Beyond the town's entrance is the Hula Valley, in present day
Israel, where the finer families once kept prosperous estates.
To the west of the town, over a ridge, the Litani river flows,
...On the other side are Mount Hermon and its peaks, which
serve as borders of Israel and Syria. Beyond it are the Golan
Heights". (loc 684)


In the process of rebuilding his ancestor's home, Shadid learns much about his town, the people, the culture, on a deeper level---or so it appears to this reader. And as a reader, I learned much more about the Middle East. I will finish with one final quote about Lebanon.


"This is a nation in recovery from losses that cannot be
remembered or articulated, but which are everywhere---in
the head, behind the eyes, in the tears and footsteps and
words...We have lost the splendors our ancestors created,
and we go elsewhere. People are reminded of that every day
here, where an older world, still visible on every
corner, fails to hide its superior ways." (loc 1232)


I recommend this highly as a memoir of one man's personal mission and as a history of the complicated Middle East.






Profile Image for Marcy.
639 reviews40 followers
October 29, 2012
Anthony Shadid was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and with every page I read of this novel, he deserved this coveted prize. Anthony's great grandfather, Isber, left war-torn Lebanon with his family to live in America, where he could secure their future, "where his children could realize their ambitions and create their own families without the distractions of fear and conflict."

In better times in Marjayoun, Isber had built a magnificent "house of stone," done in the Levant style when life was tolerant, and "more indulgent" in the Middle East. Isber's homeland "was, in essence, an amalgamation of diversities where many mingled, a realm of intersections, a crossroads of language, culture, religions, and traditions. All were welcome to pass through the territories and homelands within its landscape, where differences were often celebrated. In idea at least, the Levant was open-minded, cosmopolitan; it did not concern itself with particularities or narrow definitions or identities." The era after the Ottoman rule, lands were split up, and war ensued. "Two codes of justice, old imperial and new colonial, clashed and confused. Economies changed, currencies multiplied in the wake of the Ottoman Empire's collapse. First came the Egyptian pound, pegged to the British sterling, then the Syrian pound, fixed to the French franc. Sectarianism and nationalism, the dangerous kinds, reared their heads in spectacles of horror and cruelty." Isber's Lebanon "was perched before an abyss, more unpredictable than the Great War, and nothing, not France, not Arab leaders, not the British army across the border, not the potentates of the old order- could pull it back."

Anthony grew up in Oklahoma. He became a war correspondent and had covered three years of war in Iraq and Baghdad. His wife, "obsessed with the lethal aspects" of Anthony's career, divorced him. Tired of war and the stress of his life, Anthony had one desire, to return to his roots and transform Isber's war-torn home "to one of grace."

The community of eccentric people Anthony befriends and hires to rebuild "the house of stone" in his great-grandfather's home town bring tears to the readers' eye, mostly with laughter, and sometimes great sadness. Anthony listens endlessly to friends who hold grudges, and continue their feuds. He hires a list of characters to rebuild his great-grandfather's home - drinkers, smokers of cigarettes and pot, war-wounded, and Jean Abu, the elderly, indolent "leader" of the workers who smokes and drinks coffee all day, who actually never works on the house. The work on the house is always delayed. Workers do not show as promised, and Jean Abu's reaction to Anthony's pleading is "If this person doesn't come, if that person doesn't come, what am I supposed to do? Should I pull them by their ear, drag them, and make them work? Should I ask God to invite him over? Should I bring God from heaven and make him bring this guy here?"

Meanwhile, Anthony becomes obsessed with buying the Cemento tiles of the past, with the purpose to lay them in patterns on portions of each room's floor, to lift his great-grandfather's history, and bring back a bygone era. Anthony was in search of his identity, and influence of what Marjayoun used to represent during the height of the Ottoman empire. His great-grandfather's story rivals his own. Both stories captured my attention and my heart.

I was saddened to learn that Anthony Shadid lost his life before this book was published at age 43. Another writer wrote, "Knowing that Shadid lost his life shortly before this book was published makes each piece of tile he polished, each plant he nurtured, feel all the more significant. It also raises the quiestion: Who will watch the house now that this exceptional man is gone?"
May 14, 2012
“Empires fall. Nations topple. Boarders may shift or be realigned. Old loyalties may dissolve or, without warning, be altered. Home, whether it be structure or familiar ground is, finally, the identity that does not fade.”

With such a profound introduction, the story begins. His poetic words and sincere emotions captivated my attention in the beginning, especially when describing how home “bayt” is perceived here, in the Middle East. I quote: “A house was a display of pride and in time it would become a refuge, and finally a memory”.

However, in following chapters, detailed description of the renovation made me struggle to go on. Tile after tile, stone after stone, pipes and paint, that was too much to go through.

As chapters followed, it was like a rollercoaster ride. I was very involved once he starts talking about the immigration of his ancestors to the states, which reminded me of an Arabic novel called “America” that also described in length the Lebanese immigration and life in the states. Then back to the house and its tiles and windows, which was to me very boring.

I really wanted to know more about him, Anthony the man, who was absent in this story, so was his experiences in war zone areas like Iraq and the west bank, or more interesting the time he was held captive in Libya.

I was so sorry to know that he actually died before enjoying his Bayt (home). However, his ashes were spread between the olive trees he planted, covered with his favorite tiles. As if he renovated the house for that reason. In the end, he found his way back home.
Profile Image for Rob Warner.
256 reviews3 followers
October 22, 2012
As we age, our hearts eventually turn to our fathers, and we try to understand those who went before, what they were like, how they faced life, what challenges they overcame, and we gauge whether we measure up to our ancestors. House of Stone chronicles Shadid's return to his roots as he tries to restore the family home in Marjayoun, Lebanon, and also tries to understand his ancestors and his homeland. His quest evokes admiration for Shadid's family, sorrow for the tragedies they faced, and thoughts to return to one's own roots.

As I read, I marveled at the wars and strife that pervade Shadid's homeland, which stem from the intolerance people have for others' beliefs. In the United States we deplore such violence and intolerance, believing ourselves much more tolerant and open to others. If we honestly look at ourselves, however, we find that we are becoming much less tolerant, much more judgmental, and much less able to acknowledge that others' world views have us much validity as our own. We avoid bloodshed over religion and politics only because we avoid discussing them, but we avoid them less and less and clash more and more. Shadid helps us understand what we are becoming.

Knowing that Shadid has passed away brought melancholy as I read. I went to high school with Shadid and have seen his passion, and I felt his pain as he discussed his broken marriage and agonized over his faulty fatherhood. I loved learning about his family history as he made his ancestors come alive. I would love to see the home he restored, and applaud him for making that happen.
Profile Image for Marieke.
333 reviews194 followers
May 18, 2013
I liked this book more and more as I read, but also felt sadder and sadder with Anthony Shadid's death in the back of my mind. Maybe Dr. Khairallah is teaching him how to care for bonsai now, somewhere in an alternate dimension. Or something...

Here on Earth in the living realm, I found the predictions of the syrian conflict scattered about in the book quite unsettling. On a less morbid note, I really enjoyed reading about his family coming to America and creating their life here. I have an even deeper appreciation now for the immigrant experience here. Not to politicize things too much, but I do hope that those people in the US who are profoundly anti-immigrant take time to look back at their own families' histories...Anthony Shadid was a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist; his grandmother crossed the Mexican border illegally after her uncle, with whom she was coming to America, was rejected at Ellis Island because of an eye infection. I thought that was quite interesting.

Those are my thoughts for now...maybe I'll come back to this.
Profile Image for Mary.
836 reviews15 followers
December 4, 2012
Generally, I avoid memoirs, but since this book was up for the National Book Award, I decided to read it.

I am so glad I did.

Shadid combines the story of rebuilding his families' hundred year old home in Lebanon, which had been hit by a rocket, with his own story and that of his extended family. The story of rebuilding the house is captivating in itself. Anyone who has ever built a home or taken on a renovation project can relate to all the difficulities that Shadid experiences with finding and affording appropriate materials and reliable and skilled workmen. However, because although he speaks Arabic, he is not at home in the land of his grandfathers, so his problems are much more difficult than running off to Home Depot or using the Yellow Pages. He also brings to life many of the people he meets in the town of Marjhoun. Abu Jean the general contractor who old,irrascible, very much in charge, but in the end reliable. Dr. Khairalla, the intellectual, who is a skilled gardener,and maker of stringed instruments.

The stories of Shadid's ancestors weave through out the book. The danger of war is present through out the span of time discussed in the book. Readers watch the past flow by as Shadid's grandparents send their children away to safety and opportunity in the United States. The book is the story of these immigrants success in the United States to become doctors, lawyers, and a grandson a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

Almost finished with the book, I became curious about what Shadid was doing now, so I googled him only to find that he died in February 2012 at the age of 43 from an asthema attack. Knowing this made all the parts of the book where he addresses his young daughter about his hopes for her and his reasons for rebuilding the house more important. I learned that he remarried and had an infant son at the time of his death. At least, these children can come to know their father through this book. I was sadden to learn that we as readers had lost this talented writer with a sense of what is important in life.

I plan to read one of his other books Night Draws Near.

House of Stone is a wonderful read.
Profile Image for Kkraemer.
790 reviews21 followers
August 20, 2017
After a bad patch in his life, Anthony Shadid took a year off to rebuild his grandparents' home in Lebanon. Raised in Oklahoma City, he was more than knowledgeable about the wars and conflicts that had plagued the area, and he wanted to get a sense of its history beyond these travesties, a sense of the real people, the real geography, the family to which he belonged.

The story of his year, then, is rife with descriptions of his friends and the people who come to work on this house, and of their particular perspectives on the world. The story also tells of the grandfather who built the house as a testament to his own success and power, and of the fact that this grandfather sadly came to the understanding that his children had to leave not only the house but the country if they were to thrive. It's the story of his grandmother, too, who lived in the house until her 90's, a presence he feels in every stone and every tile.

The stones of Marjayoun bear scars and witness to the people of this place and their ongoing position as a point of crossfire between Europe and the Middle East; Muslim, Christian, and Jew; and families who have bickered for generations. The stones are deep and beautiful, if a bit irregular...

Along the way, Shadid reflects on the Arabic language and culture, on the history of an area torn by strife and rich in tradition, and on the central importance of olives, almonds, and citrus in any garden, any gathering, any good society.

Because Shadid is, at once, an outsider and an insider, he offers windows into Marjayoun that would be blocked to anyone else. Because he is both a deeply reflective man and an excellent writer, he offers insights unequaled by anything else I've read.

838 reviews155 followers
May 16, 2020
The true story is at once hopeful and sad. The author restores his ancestral home and rediscovers its significance to him and how it represents what Lebanon has endured. He recounts the many struggles and joys of engaging with neighbors and vendors. And in doing so, he draws the reader into the story of his family and his parents' homeland. There is something very intimate and personal about his voice. He is vulnerable and open. His American sensibility made the book accessible in my opinion. But more importantly, he shares the profound connections he has always had to the people who lived in this house. This affirmation and rediscovery are poignant.

And the writing is simply beautiful: clear and affecting.

A friend suggested that I look for the youtube videos that the author made. Viewing these enlivened the reading experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFdHE...

There are several Youtube videos. And I recommend viewing them all to round out the read and to see the author and hear him speak.

Writing this review particularly saddens me now because the author, in the line of duty as a New York Times journalist in a war zone, died. The house completed as a labor of love stands as a proud testament of his integrity and his love of his heritage. And at the same time, the circumstances of his death also punctuate a message: one of longing to endure, and to restore.
Profile Image for Amalia.
116 reviews
May 23, 2012
Disclaimer: Anthony was a middle school classmate in Oklahoma. He was a nice guy as an 8th grader, and I was delighted to find that he lost none of that "nice guy" over his lifetime. Nice teenagers are a special commodity.

I read early things about this book during the winter and already had my heart set on reading it. When Anthony died in February, that motivated me to get my hands on it as quickly as I could (and I was at Kings English to get a copy the day it was released). I was not disappointed.

Anthony masterfully intertwines his own family history in now-Lebanon and Oklahoma with the rebuilding of his grandfather's house. I may have learned more Oklahoma history from House of Stone than I did in a whole semester during 8th grade. Most importantly, Anthony's love that he develops for this place- and the love that he has for his family- are core themes that simply cannot be missed by the reader. It's also almost impossible to not share his palpable sadness at the culture that is being slowly destroyed in the area of his family's ancestral home.

My simple recommendation: Read it. The loss of Anthony's voice from the world of journalism and prose is an immeasurable loss, so I hope you'll also take time to savor the story. It's worth it.

Profile Image for Kelly.
124 reviews8 followers
February 17, 2013
I really wanted to read this book when I saw that article about Shadid's death in Syria from an asthma attack. It finally came in at the library, and I started to read it with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, that enthusiasm quickly turned to disappointment as I felt that it became a chore to read. I can honestly only think of one book that I have had such a hard time reading that I did not finish, and it was by a religious zealot that was trying to preach through a series of disjointed stories. While Shadid had a continuous train of thought and a purpose to his book, I just could not get into it. It's a shame, really, because I enjoyed his reporting and had seen reviews of this book about how it was personal and moving and blah blah blah blah. Instead I found it plodding and slow and you needed a chart to keep track of the cast of characters. I made it through 40% of this book in three weeks (compared to my normal speed of finishing a book like this in 2-3 days) and honestly was a bit relieved when the library loan ended and I could no longer access the book on my Kindle. I'm sorry, but while I wish the family and followers of Shadid well and will miss his contributions, I just couldn't get behind House of Stone.
Profile Image for Robert Palmer.
655 reviews13 followers
July 9, 2013
Shadid was born in Oklahoma ,USA of Lebanese -Christian decent in 1968 and won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting twice. In 2006 he was covering Israel's attack on Lebanon when he heard that an Israeli rocket had crashed into the Ancestral home his Great Grandfather had built. This was a book I had heard about and very much wanted to read, however I could never relate or connect to any of the characters as the story moved ever so slowly . Most of the book was about his renovation of the Ancestral home which was OK except that that I have heard this same story from so many friends,neighbors and relatives about all the delays and how the job never gets finished on time,that I started to skip much of it. The best part of the book was the flashbacks of the family history which was printed in italics and is a history of the area ( Marjayoun ) at the time of the Ottoman Empire before Lebanon and Israel even existed.
It is sad that Shadid died just a few months befor this book was published.
One thing that I did not like was that Shadid assumes that the Israeli- Arab war was overreacting by Israel.
Profile Image for Emi Yoshida.
1,535 reviews92 followers
March 30, 2012
This is the first Anthony Shadid I've read and he came across as rather guarded. He's much more generous in his descriptions of the foibles and weaknesses of all his ancestors, neighbors and contractors. I did learn a good bit about Lebanon's history, and the country's identity within complicated constructs of cultures and politics (Christian, Muslim, Arab, Maronite, Druze, Levant...).

The story is about an American journalist who gets divorced and takes a leave of absence from the Washington Post to travel to his ancestral home in Lebanon, to rebuild the ruined wreckage in to a beautiful home for its founders' great-great-grand-daughter hopefully. The project takes nearly three years. But I want to know what happened to his ex-wife the doctor, and how his daughter Laila gets along with his new wife and their son, I want to know that everybody is okay since Anthony Shadid died leaving Syria (of an asthma attack), prompting the early release of this book. I guess I'm just nosy.
Profile Image for Michael.
462 reviews43 followers
July 26, 2012
http://philadelphiareviewofbooks.com/...

An almost fetishistic love of birds and, to a lesser extent, all the other observable powers of nature, drew Annie Proulx in 2006 to a new home in Wyoming on the North Platte River. The remote 640-acre ranch, comprising wetlands, prairie and 400-foot cliffs offered Proulx a blank slate on which to build not only a new house, but also a fully reclusive existence, a perch on which to observe the desolation of life in Big Sky country and to obsess over the things she might obsess over.

Some of those obsessions arise directly from the land.

The birds fly and breed and hunt, and with a little help from high-powered binoculars and telescopes, Proulx observes them. The gravel driveway needs plowing during the early Spring months, when the snow still falls, but the country isn’t paralyzed by its own remoteness and chill. Proulx beats away at the hesitant plowmen until they come with their trucks.

But many of the other obsessions that consume Proulx arise from a self-conception as French-Canadian trash which still tugs at her psyche even in her eighth decade. Proulx designs her own new home, with the help of an architect, and pays for contractors to build it to her specifications. Or, to put it more bluntly, the bleak and taut short stories of the Wyoming countryside Proulx collected in three volumes, Close Range, Bad Dirt, and Fine Just the Way It Is, pay for her new home. In 2005, Ang Lee directed an adaptation of the most famous of those stories, Brokeback Mountain, you’ll remember, in which Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal play cowboys who consummate their romantic longings together in the remote hills of Wyoming.

This film made Proulx a household name, and spawned fan fiction she describes as, “ghastly manuscripts and pornish rewrites of the story” by straight men who claim to “understand men better than I do.”

She followed up the film release in 2008 with the third volume of Wyoming Stories and then in 2011 with Bird Cloud, an account of her acquisition and development of the North Platte River property interspersed with vague vignettes of her family history.

While Proulx’s incorporation of family history and the story of the Native Americans who inhabited her property long before Europeans journeyed to America is insightful and interesting, her hyper-neurotic tendencies concerning the design and decoration of her new home reveal her to be something of a batty social climber who is more concerned with the color of the floor in her kitchen than most anything else. Her descriptions of the Bird Cloud house’s solar panels, Japanese soak tub, concrete floor and elk horn handles on kitchen cabinets delve into pornish lifestyle writing, so different from her stripped-down fiction. It’s a little self-important of Proulx to think we care about her house’s mechanical room or any of a myriad other minor details. The lengthy description of her taste in interiors becomes a defense of her low French-Canadian birth, as if she’s creating her own high-birth classiness, a taste she believes you cannot earn. She seems to say, in her odd juxtaposition of memoir and braggadocio, “I come from nothing, but look at what I can afford now!”

Still, Proulx finds a great amount of history in Bird Cloud, through researching land ownership. We should all know this much about the places we inhabit. Her cataloging of the Native American past of her property is passionate, if a bit hypocritical considering her ownership of such a huge tract of formerly Indian land. Is she much better than the ranchers who stole the land in the first place?

And the disdain she feels for the locals, who she must deal with in order to build her mansion, expresses itself perfectly in the nicknames she creates for them – Uphill Bob, Mr. Busybody, the James Gang, Mr. Floorfix, Catfish, Mr. Solar. The people of Wyoming, it turns out, only display character inasmuch as they can serve Proulx’s aesthetic ends. In her fiction, she treats them with such humility, but in person she’s insufferably arrogant.

Dwight Garner, in the New York Times, writes that “Bird Cloud is an especially off-putting book about a wealthy and imperious writer who annoys the local residents (she runs off their cows), overwrites about nature and believes people will sympathize with her about the bummers involved in getting her Japanese soaking tub, tatami-mat exercise area, Mexican talavera sink and Brazilian floor tiles installed just so. When Ms. Proulx’s house turns out to be a bit of a folly, its roads impassable in winter, you feel that a bell somewhere has been struck, and justice served.” The Schadenfreude is evident and probably shared by many readers.

But Proulx ends her book with a year in the bird life at Bird Cloud, the most sane and human project of the book, which is otherwise filled with meaningless neurotic ramblings. A long quote from this last section, shows how the best of her non-fiction writing resonates the same way her fiction does – tightly and with the rhythm of natural life – none of the overwriting Garner accuses her of.

On that first solitary day at Bird Cloud, I walked east to the Jack Creek bridge and looked up at a big empty nest high on the cliff across the river. It was clearly an eagle nest. Had the bald eagles used it before moving half a mile west to the cottonwoods? Had it belonged to another pair of eagles? The huge structure was heaped with snow. Somehow it had a fierce look, black and bristling with stick ends. At 4:30 the sun still plated the cliff with gold light. Ten minutes later it had faded to cardboard gray. I looked again at the distant big empty nest, then noticed that on the colluvium below and a little to the west of the nest there were two elk, likely refugees from a big herd that had moved through the property several weeks earlier when hunting season opened. Twenty or thirty geese flew upriver high enough to be out of gun range. Dusk thickened, and then, in the gloaming, I saw a large bird fly into a cranny directly above the elk. Roosting time for someone, but who?

Anthony Shadid, on the other hand, in his new memoir, House of Stone, manages to incorporate a rediscovery of his family’s roots in the small town of Marjayoun in Lebanon, with the story of his meticulous reconstruction of the house his great-grandfather built there in the first decade of the 20th century. Shadid died of an asthma attack brought on by his smoking habit and an allergy to horses. He died following a bunch of packhorses while leaving Syria, where he covered the beginning of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad for the New York Times. One of the best American reporters on the Arab Spring, Shadid fell captive, along with three of his colleagues, to government thugs in Libya before the fall of Ghaddafi in 2011. In 2002, an Israeli sniper shot him in the shoulder while he was on assignment for the Washington Post in Ramallah, the West Bank. Shadid’s prior book, Night Draws Near, dealt deftly with the experience of everyday Iraqis – shopkeepers, teachers, doctors, booksellers – in the face of America’s war there and the sectarian violence it inspired and unleashed. His death came so soon before the publication of House of Stone, the appendices and jacket copy, the biography under Shadid’s smiling portrait on the back inside flap, make no mention of it. The work is not quite posthumous, but Shadid’s fate hangs over the discoveries he makes in its pages and his hope to pass these rich memories to his children.

Shadid shows the complexities of Lebanon, its culture, politics, struggles with Israel and its convoluted social fabric, through his family history and their dilapidated homestead in Marjayoun. The thick, obscuring dust on the cemento tiles Shadid’s great-grandfather Isber laid on the floors, and the gnarled ironwork of its balconies, and the concrete-filled arches of its lower entrance, hide a history unveiled slowly, with sledgehammers and pickaxes and the soft cloths of the tile cleaner.

Abu Jean, a man in his 70s, who identifies himself only as the father of his son Jean, works as the foreman on Isber’s house. Shibil, a rough contemporary of Shadid, serves as his glassy-eyed analyst and drinking buddy. The social intricacies of Lebanon, like Abu Jean’s laidback haggling over his low pay as foreman, and Shibil’s stoned hospitality, and everyone else’s nosiness, paint a vivid picture of life in Marjayoun. Though it has seen better days, and suffers from a depression and brain-drain evident in much of the Middle East, Shadid’s Marjayoun makes Proulx’s Bird Cloud look downright alien and inhospitable.

Nonetheless, the older Lebanese who populate House of Stone exhibit a sense of mourning for a lost Levant, especially interesting for those of us born long after the idea of the Ottoman Empire and the national partitions of World War I in the region lost the gaze of our intellectual discourse. In Isber’s world, the one he thought he was bringing his house and children into, the ties of family, tribe, religion and region crossed the boundaries of the nations we see today. Christians dominated the social fabric of Marjayoun, but they shared so much with their Arab Muslim cousins that many times an Orthodox priest would act as muezzin and recite the call to prayer when no one else was available. For some of the old-timers, the Ottoman rule reached over such a vast territory that the conflicts of today were unthinkable. In a region where national boundaries often serve as cages, a time when free movement through the Middle East existed for all members of society strikes us as quaint and unimaginable. Mr. Chaya and Dr. Khairalla, the two most noble people Shadid introduces us to, keep the deepest traditions alive in this decaying landscape – Chaya with his tile craft and Khairalla with his building of ouds, a traditional stringed instrument.

Back at his comfortable and quiet home in Marjayoun, Shadid picks olives carefully and slowly, but prematurely from one of his great-grandmother Bahija’s ancient trees, unable to adopt the spirit of Lebanon today for fear of despoiling the Lebanon of yesterday. He lives in constant fear of Abu Jean and his contractors delaying the completion of his house forever, or worse, ruining the existing history instead of unveiling it. Still, the respect Shadid shows to every man who works on his home or sells him tiles or iron fixtures, none of whom are related directly to him, casts Proulx’s condescension with her workers as mere brash disregard for the ways of country folk. Every person involved in the restoration of Isber’s house, from Abu Jean, the tired foreman, to George, the hyper stonemason who speaks only in the third person, to Maalouf, the trader of household antiquities, presents a roadblock to Shadid’s project and then shows the way forward. Where Proulx lets her East Coast ways trump the Wyoming mode of operating, Shadid lets his impatient American tendencies fall in line with the rhythm he at first resists in Marjayoun.

This is not to say Shadid finds himself immediately comfortable in Marjayoun. Many of the locals think he is CIA, but his disappointment with the fading town of his ancestors, shared by Assaad, the returned Wisconsin restaurateur who looks like Saddam Hussein, makes him more like Thomas Wolfe’s Eugene Gant in Look Homeward, Angel, less an intruder than a connected but detached observer. The richness of the small town attracts him, but the bitter ignorance repulses. Those old glimpses back into his great-grandfather’s Levant make the home’s rehabilitation worthwhile. Dr. Khairalla dodders around the garden and teaches Shadid patience and respect and the older, slower pace of life.

The account of construction in House of Stone is interspersed with the narrative of Shadid’s grandmother Raeefa’s childhood in Marjayoun. Raeefa’s flight to the United States and her marriages there and her shop and home in Oklahoma City, imbue the book with the magic of a García Márquez novel, in its quiet adherence to an old order. Some may forget García Márquez started as a newspaper writer, too. However, though the Marjayounis created a rich cultural framework and community in Oklahoma City, even there the social fabric has come undone and the old-timers speak of the 1960s as a sort of golden era, where parties were never-ending and the connection to the past stronger than ever.

Not only must Shadid confront the decay of buildings and society in his homeland, but he must also deal will the constant specter of war. But the conflict in Beirut and the turmoil of the Arab Spring, including Shadid’s imprisonment in Libya, make his sense of home in Marjayoun even stronger. It’s ironic perhaps that in such similar books, Shadid, the journalist, has created a more literary work than Proulx, the novelist and short story writer. The powerful resurrection of the solid house in Marjayoun and the disposability of the new mansion on Bird Cloud, though, speak for themselves.
Profile Image for Mary K.
498 reviews26 followers
December 8, 2020
I tapped that I finished this book but actually I stopped after about a third. Shadid’s family emigrated to America from Lebanon around WWI because of - surprise - violence in the Middle East. Shadid is born in America but works for a newspaper and returns many times as a war corespondent. The book is about his return to the land of his parents where he sets out to rebuild their home. A third of the way into the book no progress has been made and indeed there’s very little reference to it. It was a lot of meandering with no point. His friends are kind of humorous and entertaining but not enough for me to stay with the book. And of course Israel somehow becomes a villain in its retaliation of ubiquitous attacks from terrorists, although my heart does go out to innocent victims such as this author’s family
654 reviews15 followers
November 13, 2012
Anthony Shadid has written about restoring his identity by means of restoring his great-grandfather's stone house in a Lebanese viillage called Jedeidet Marjayoun. He writes in a lyrical way, shifting back and forth between eras so frequently that it creates some confusion, at least it did for me. There are at least three intertwined tales; Bayt, meaning 'home' in Arabic, which refers not only to the physical, but also to the feelings of security and belonging that come with; the history of Lebanon; and the personal histories of the Samara and Shadid families in the Jedeidet Marjayoun and in America. Shadid describes his good friends in Lebanon in some detail, illustrating their world views and demonstrating why peace in the Middle East is not always a macro issue, but sometimes a micro issue about values and cultural differences. When discussing Lebanese history, Shadid puts much emphasis on the post World War I redrawing of boundaries in the Middle East that complicated the nomadic career of his great-grandfather and others who roamed the area from the Houran in Syria to the cities of Palestine in their search for business and wealth. His argument here is that the drawing of borders took away the life his great-grandfather and others enjoyed for hundreds of years, separating them from old ways and old friends. There is heavy emphasis on the sins of the French, who were given Lebanon to administer, and, of course, on the Israelis. After the Ottoman Empire, which was not a benign regime, fell at then end of the First World War, many Lebanese wanted to try self rule, but before long, they fell into sectarian violence based on religious affiliation that continues to this day. It is difficult to see how they could have ended up at a different place, whether the French came between or they were left alone to make their own decisions. When it comes to the Shadid and Samara families, the barrage of names can be defeating to Americans. Nabeeh, Nabiha, Majib, Ratiba, Bahija and more. It was hard to keep track and equally difficult to separate Shadid from Samara at times. But the story itself, of a family who chose to separate in order to avoid the violence in Lebanon, was affecting. They worked hard, and became wealthy the old fashioned way. Shadid's writing style contributed to the reader's confusion as he jumped back and forth from time to time and person to person. The story never came to the reader in a straight line, but as a series of loops. There was a lot of repetition of facts, theories and events some of it necessary because one hadn't seen the character for several chapters and may have forgotten salient points. The writing was beautiful, though, and I imagine its lyrical nature was due to Shadid's desire to communicate the Lebanese/Bedouin/Christian nature that his Samara family inherited. This book was made more poignant by the fact of Shadid's early death of asthma while walking through the desert behind a horse. He threw himself into dangerous situations repeatedly, and had previously been shot, kidnapped and beaten in pursuit of the story. He neglected his family and lost his first marriage. He never felt completely at home in American culture or Marjayoun. He agonized about being a better family man while running away from family. He was warm, generous, caring and had a bad temper and difficulty making choices. He smoked too much and missed his family when he was working and his job when he was with family, always guilty that he was in the wrong place. His reporting was without peer, however, and the consensus is that he gave Americans a view of the Arab world that they would not otherwise have had. I hope he felt more at peace after his remarriage and the birth of his second child, a son. It's a worthwhile book, though I suspect you might begin to skim some of it!
Profile Image for Natalie.
95 reviews2 followers
May 1, 2012
It's important to put a face on history. This promises to be a good book from the first page. For a page turning story with beautiful words, dry sage humor, a culture/history memoir, and for thought provoking reading. A good book makes you want to read more. This is one of those.

I thought it would be more about Anthony Shadid, the man. He actually concentrates on making a visual picture of the place, the people, the culture through stories and encounters. And through in large part centered around the house of is Great Grandfather as he tries to rebuild it. Making it the symbol of his looking back into his family and the countries past history. You can miss this symbol. I was worried this wouldn't be a good book because some reviewed it as being too much about the details of his house building, which was boring to them.

He does some reminiscing on himself a bit, but brushes over that to build up a family tree story in snippets. As I read it I thought it seemed like that was to replace his lack of building his own family and choosing his career. Regaining his lost possibilities through understanding where he came from, and what brought him to now. A lost place, drifting people,and a lost man. Reading this gives you a sense of living the aftermath of years of living through a war torn place. Which it is, and this man personally saw a lot of that in his reporting. Lots of pages to chew on. Not a quick surface read. There is introspection involved. So it's not directly about him, but afterward you realize the book is entirely about how he became who he was. Too bad he didn't live to write more. The reading is like the first chapter. The last chapter maybe would have been the next book. More about himself directly. Still, it made me realize how much I didn't know. Which makes it a good book. I want to read more to find out.

I think it might be to shallow to take this book as his memoir. He remarried, had another child, went back to reporting. Now I think, after reading more about him (not enough, I'll read more,) that he's a very passionate knowledgeable man of the area(an understatement). With excellent writing skills. A really good understanding of people. It's not a superficial book or a simple man. He had grip on the convoluted turmoil of people's lives during war and past that.

Now I want to read more about him and also the area. It's a shame he couldn't have lived and wrote more. I appreciated his perspective. I was too busy with family life during his reporting years to pay attention. My loss. This book makes me want to dig backward and see what I missed.

I'm including these quotes from the New York times article about his death, because it shows through his poignant writing in this book:

“He had such a profound and sophisticated understanding of the region,” Martin Baron, the editor of The Boston Globe, for whom Mr. Shadid worked during his tenure there, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “More than anything, his effort to connect foreign coverage with real people on the ground, and to understand their lives, is what made his work so special. It wasn’t just a matter of diplomacy: it was a matter of people, and how their lives were so dramatically affected by world events.”

"The Times nominated him, along with a team of his colleagues, for the 2012 Pulitzer in international reporting. (The awards are announced in April.)

In its citation accompanying the nomination, The Times wrote:

“Steeped in Arab political history but also in its culture, Shadid recognized early on that along with the despots, old habits of fear, passivity and despair were being toppled. He brought a poet’s voice, a deep empathy for the ordinary person and an unmatched authority to his passionate dispatches.” "

Profile Image for Jessica.
321 reviews33 followers
June 20, 2012
If you've been a student of the Middle East in the last decade, it's been almost impossible to avoid Anthony Shadid's extraordinary work. He reported the war in Iraq with an almost holy kind of insight and love for the people who suffered the onslaught of war. After Iraq, he wound up, among other places, in Libya, where he was detained by Qaddafi's security forces; after that, he was drawn to Syria, and that's where he died. A horrible loss, not just to his family and friends, but to the world, for he was truly a gifted reporter.
Luckily for those most dear to him, he finished this book, House of Stone, before he died. The book tells two stories - of one his family's past, and one of his own imagined future, and the both center around a graceful home built in the tiny village of Marjayoun, Lebanon. Built by Shadid's maternal great-grandfather and long abandoned, the house becomes an avenue by which Shadid explores the intertwining issues of family, identity, religion, and hope. We see glimpses of a Levant that has long expired, an lamentations over that lost world. We also see a tentative and growing sense of finding one roots - and the chance to put down roots of one's own. What makes the story of regeneration so poignant, and what Shadid could not have known, of course, is that this book wasn't published until shortly after his untimely death. I read it with a heavy heart and a sense of loss and longing that, if it hadn't been summer vacation and my own life been so swell, certainly would have moved me to tears.
One thing this book is not: a handbook to understanding the Middle East, except in the most roundabout and personal of ways. In other words, if you don't know your geography and basic history of Lebanon, you'll probably be a bit bewildered. It's also not an action packed narrative, or full of the violent tension that you might expect from a war reporter like Shadid. Instead, it's equal parts love song and lament. A powerful and elegiac work.
Profile Image for Jennifer Swapp.
227 reviews38 followers
January 26, 2013
Most of this book I read beside a computer, accessing wikipedia and trek earth websites often to better understand the history of lebanon and the Levant, as well as to visualize the descriptive flowers, plants and architecture and countryside that Shadid wonderfully elicited.

It as noteworthy that Shadid's storyline was based on his great grandfather and great grandmother who sent their children to America to protect them from the destruction on war in Lebanon- a sacrifice they were willing to make- a sacrifice that portrayed the great love of Marjayoun, Lebanon- part of their Bayt, and the great love of their family and their desire to protect them- the other part of Bayt. Shadid in his own way mirrored his great grandfather, as he tried to balance the great love of his wife and children, and the great connection to the middle east through journalism. He had to make sacrifices to time with his family in order to continue his journalism and also to work on the reconstruction of his house. His untimely death has lead many to question his commitment to journalism in such a dangerous region of the world.

I loved the history lesson of the middle east. I loved the humorous storyline of the small town experts working to rebuild his house. I also enjoyed the lebanese american immigrant's experience. The imagery of the rebirth of olive trees, the replanting of the passiflora vines, the commitment to the 100 year process of taming a bonsai tree and symbolized the patience and hope in an area often destroyed by wars; the love of a people who would continue to develop beauty in the hope that it will one day remain.

Profile Image for Aramis.
163 reviews1 follower
February 13, 2013
I got the book after a heart-breaking interview with Nada, Shadid's widow. I'm happy I read it and knowing that Shadid had passed away, passages where he describes looking forward to living in the rebuilt house with his children are truly touching. I'm also conflicted about this book as some parts of it greatly annoyed me as well.
On the one hand, the writing is beautiful, the characters are compelling, you feel a real sense of love and admiration for this part of Lebanon (and the Levant in general). The stories from his family's emigration are beautiful and compelling and work great intermingled with the stories of the rebuilding of his ancestral house (that are always funny and touching).
On the other hand, it is terribly biased. For someone who doesn't know much of the region and its history (and I'm going to guess that's a majority of the readership), you'd think that what completely ruined Lebanon is Israel; not Syrian intervention, not the decades of civil war and sectarianism, not the fact that the whole south of the country is an enclave to itself that the government cannot control. I don't agree with many many things that Israel does. Israel faces its own traumas from its terribly misguided intervention in the Lebanese mess and has much to answer for, but Shadid keeps coming back to Palestine this and Palestine that again and again. Is this a book about Lebanon or about how bad Israel is? In the end, I think it's sad when a country has to look back to a totally corrupt Ottoman empire to define its 'golden age' of tolerance, as Shadid does. What kind of future does a country have when its people keep leaving or looking only back?
Profile Image for David.
1,630 reviews147 followers
May 11, 2019
House of Stone author Anthony Shadid is a Lebanese-American who grew up in Oklahoma was one of four New York Times reporters captured in Libya in 2011. When he was freed, instead of returning to the USA, he went home to what had been his great-grandfather's estate in a small town in Lebanon. He had started to slowly rebuild it three years earlier and decided to continue and complete the transformation. The book is almost entirely focused on his work on that house and the frustrating but often comical dealings he had with workers he hired who seemed to epitomize the Mexican concept of manana (tomorrow)! Being of Lebanese descent and even having some relatives still living in the area sometimes helped but other times worked against him as many who had gone to America and came back were generally wealthy so the locals often took advantage of that. But what fascinated me about this book was it provides an intimate glimpse inside an old and proud heritage as well as history of that part of the middle east. It also describes the journeys undertaken by many to leave everything and move to the US in search of a safer and better life. This wasn't what I initially expected from this book but it turned out to be an enjoyable and at times inspirational read. If you are looking for an intensely human story to get away from all of the chaos of today, this may be that book for you. And the bonus is you may learn a bit about rehabbing really old houses!
Profile Image for Sima Bu Jawdeh.
31 reviews18 followers
January 29, 2024
I already love this one.. I know it'll simultaneously heal and shatter my heart.. more to follow

///

An instant favorite. It might not be for everyone, as it is a slow read, but Shadid weaves the personal (the longing for home) with the contextual (the turbulent early years of poverty, imperliasm and colonialism in 20th century Levant) quite seamlessly in the pretext of rebuilding his forsaken family home.
A testament to migration, family and a deep desire to belong-- Shadid faces what many Lebanese diaspora face: Who am I, far away from Lebanon and my land? To what identity do I subscribe to? To my nation (Lebanon) which in many times has failed and abandoned me (yet I long for it) or to my host nation which has nurtured me (yet I remain estranged to it)?

Shadid goes back to Marjeyoun, a once hustling and bustling village in the South of Lebanon. He comes back from the US on a personal mission to revive the abandoned family home his grandparents grew up in, built by his great grandparents, before everyone migrated to different parts of the New World. The story unfolds of his desire to bring about the reconstruction of his family home, while facing tedious day to day obstacles and simultaneously discussing the question of identity weaved well in an understanding of our heritage and culture.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the shaping of Lebanon in the 20th century, and those who question their identity far away from home.
19 reviews
January 7, 2013
Anthony Shadid is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent. He died last year of an asthma attack while reporting in Syria for the New York Times. Shortly after, his third book, House of Stone was published.
It’s clear by the first page of this memoir, that Shadid is an engaging and insightful writer with a keen sense of observation and extensive knowledge of the political strife which his family’s place of origin, Lebanon, has endured for many years.
House of Stone interweaves Lebanon’s troubled history of wars, its effects on his ancestors, with his returning to his Grandfather’s home town to rebuild the old family home. The home had been hit by mortar during the first Israel-Lebanese war. The process of rebuilding his Grandfather’s home, as an “outsider” is filled with trials and tribulations. Shadid cultivates relationships, with his workers, contractor, and other colorful characters of the community, while negotiating the nuances of a vastly different culture.
I could scarcely put this book down, Shadid’s narrations of historical and present day family and friends were so captivating.
Profile Image for David.
59 reviews1 follower
December 25, 2013
Given the poignancy of the author's death earlier this year, I really wanted to like this book; and indeed it evokes the lost character of the Levant with tenderness and beauty. Shadid tells the story of his attempt to rebuild "his" family home in Lebanon. I use quotes because Shadid's only connection to the home is multiple generations ago: the home belonged to a family patriarch from a lost era long before Shadid. With his hardcore vision of a rebuilt home, Shadid lets himself be thoroughly carried away by a past he never knew personally, a past he can only imagine. And that's basically how he loses me: Shadid is achingly unaware that life is available only in the present moment, and indeed frequently expresses guilt over recurring absences from his young daughter. (You do get a hunch why his first wife suddenly left him: it's hard to be present with an absent person.) While Shadid constantly imagines what his ancestors would think or do, and while he struggles against the odds of his fantastic dream to rebuild their forgotten homestead, the here and now (and any chance of living happily in it) are utterly missing.
Profile Image for Florence.
864 reviews13 followers
August 7, 2013
Anthony Shadid returned to his ancestral home in a Lebanese village, finding it in ruins as the result of war and neglect. He spent a year restoring the home to its former glory and reminiscing about the history of his family and of the Middle East. The area that is now Lebanon was part of the Ottoman Empire. After the First World War when victorious European powers took control of the area, new borders were drawn, cutting off access to Syria and what is now Israel. The imagined past is bittersweet. War seems to be an endless occurence in Lebanon. The present is frustrating as Shadid struggles with workmen possessing very little work ethic engaged in laying tile and marble in the old house. There were some satisfying friendships, a few good meals, and the pleasure of restoring what Shadid hoped would be a family sanctuary. Unfortunately, Anthony Shadid died in Syria in 2012, shortly after the book was published.

The book would have been more enjoyable if it had included some maps, a few photographs, and a glossary of Arab terms.
Profile Image for Mohamed Metwally.
577 reviews70 followers
February 11, 2024
A book about the lost days before borders divided the "Belad el Sham" into Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon using the House of Al Shadids as the axis around which our author spins his tale. It is also a tale of self discovery of Anthony's roots in lebanon after 2 generations spending their lives as Americans, and what drove the lebanese exodus to countries of the world.

The book title gets it right, sorting the priorities and level of attention given every topic with highest going to The house itself with much details about the refurbishment of House Shadid followed by the Shadids' history through which the middle east conflict is shown.

The epilogue of the book goes off topic to the Arab spring and is not a fitting closure for this story, which is not very engaging in itself compared to 'The Lemon Tree' although both books discuss a lost home being returned to after generations.

MiM
Profile Image for Jennifer Abdo.
270 reviews17 followers
May 7, 2018
This is the story of a house and home, that of Anthony Shadid, the journalist who died covering Syria, who had just covered Tahrir Square in Egypt and had been prisoner in Libya for a week. He rebuilt his family home and that process and the relatives and characters he met brought him closer to his past and a peaceful Lebanon/ Middle East that they all dreamed of.

I was somewhat jealous that he still had access to the piece of ground his ancestors walked on, that there was a house to rebuild and so much memory of his great grandparents. But in his telling, of people he met who had seen too much of the world and were no longer part of the town though they continued to live there, temporary citizens that never settled in and people like himself- I realized that he proved that community doesn't mean you own the piece of ground from your ancestors, it's about the connections you make in the place where you are.

Profile Image for Hazel.
230 reviews9 followers
March 28, 2012
This book is told in two concurrent parts: Anthony Shadid's family history as shaped by the Levant and the emigration to America, and his restoration of his family's home in Lebanon, also in the context of the disappearance of the Levant and the rise of the troubles of the Middle East. I enjoyed the story of his family more than the repetition and trials of the difficulties of renovation. I appreciated the importance of the restoration to him and the arc of the story, but it needed further editing. This book is most important now as a testament the the loss and absence of this remarkable reporter, so young in his years. There is a creepy foreshadowing in his restoration: he was warned not to plant the cypress trees so close to his home, they were trees meant for a cemetery: doing so meant an early death.
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