A History of the Big House

October 15, 2024
Multigenerational novel of life in a changing Lebanon. "This is not the Wild West," declares the narrator of Beirut writer Majdalani's novel, originally published in French in 2005. But it is, in a way. At the end of the 19th century, paterfamilias Wakim Nassar and his younger brother Selim arrive in rural Mount Lebanon, "at the edge of the mulberry groves of Ayn Chir," like what they see, and begin to settle down. They have left home, it seems, because of some unspecified transgression: "a simple brawl after a game of dominoes," or perhaps "just something to do with women." Wakim soon has a vision: He envisions an empire of orange trees. Although "the two men who have just arrived on horseback are not cowboys," it is indeed the Wild West: Bedouins squat on Wakim's land, insisting on ancestral rights to the well that now waters his orchards, and Wakim finds it necessary to recruit a contingent of fighters--in that happy earlier Lebanon, made up of a mix of Muslims and Christians that "resembles the ride of the Magnificent Seven"--to chase the Bedouins away. Having done so, Wakim is now ready to build the first two-story house in the village, the Big House, even as World War I breaks out and the ruling Ottomans find themselves on the way to history's dustheap. Majdalani's novel plays out against a broad sweep of history, when Turkish rule gives way to French: The only constant is the passing of generations and the slow crumbling of the Big House--but happily, with the promise of restoration, for like the rest of poor battered Lebanon, "this is where everything must soon begin all over again." Deliberately paced and carefully written: a memorable evocation of a distant but not irrecoverable time.

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November 1, 2024
Like an archaeologist drawing deductions from scattered fragments of pottery, Majdalani's unnamed narrator uses various methods to piece together the life of their grandfather, Wakim Nassar, and the family's mythology, often taking creative liberty to fill in the gaps. While this narrator is undescribed and undisclosed, much is expressed through the depiction of their grandfather. After being exiled from Marsad due to a possible altercation, Wakim and his brother Selim move to Ayn Chir, where they begin to replace fields of mulberry trees with a grove of orange trees. As these trees grow into an orange empire, the Big House constructed on the land bears witness to the multigenerational success and strife of the Nassar family as well as mimicking the rise, fall, and eventual rise again of the Mount Lebanon region. With a literary style and leisurely flow, French Lebanese writer Majdalani thoroughly details the narrator's journey as they meander through 100 years of family history. Originally published in French in 2005, this lavishly written family saga retains its elegant storytelling through Diver's translation.

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