Jean Said Makdisi arrived in Beirut as an outsider: a Palestinian refugee who had escaped Jerusalem in 1948 and had grown up across Egypt and America. But in 1975, as Lebanon’s capital became the locus of a ferocious civil war, Jean decided to stay. As sectarian violence mounted and the city collapsed around her, she documented it all: the cars that exploded in the street; the high-rise buildings that turned to dust; the museums that became military checkpoints; the bifurcation of the city; and the brutality of the Israeli siege in 1982.

Taking in the fourteen years of civil war, Makdisi lays bare the violent face of conflict, meticulously documenting its impact on every aspect of civilian life – from the fearsome whistle of shellfire, to the mundanity of queuing for food, to the constant, wandering search for lost loved ones.

Intimate and profound, Beirut Fragments is a heartbreaking memoir of a city under siege and an impassioned defence of collective humanity. With vivid insight and urgency, Makdisi records civilian life brought to its limits and reconstructs the image of a place – and its people – that emerged from the ashes.