Since 2019, Lebanon has been sinking into an economic crisis, and since October 7, the south of the country has been the scene of clashes between the Israeli army and Hezbollah. Amidst the chaos, the book economy is being hit very hard. The financial crisis is a historic crisis: as a reminder, in 5 years, the Lebanese currency has been devalued by 98% and three quarters of the population live below the poverty line. To this collapse of the country, we must add the explosion of the port which ravaged Beirut in 2020, the Coronavirus pandemic and finally now, the war between Israel and Gaza which extends to the south of Lebanon where the dead are being counted. now in the hundreds.
Lebanon is sadly accustomed to tragedies. We think of the war of 2006, already against Israel, and of course the civil war and its 15 years of fratricidal clashes between 1975 and 1990.
Once again today, the financial collapse combined with the regional conflagration is impacting all sectors of the economy. Already very fragile, the book sector has particularly suffered over the past 5 years. In the first year of the crisis, between 2019 and 2020, the turnover of publishing houses collapsed by around 70%. Many have gone out of business. Thus, of the 1,730 publishers listed in 2000 in Lebanon, there remain less than forty.
Some businesses are resisting and adapting to the crisis
The first challenge is of course the prices. Until now, the overwhelming majority of books were printed abroad and imported, but with inflation, they have become unaffordable for the Lebanese. A 20 euro book represents almost half of the monthly salary of a soldier today in Lebanon. The first emergency to keep the sector afloat is therefore to try to make accessible again an object that has become a luxury product. Indeed, Lebanese booksellers assure us, the problem is not so much that people no longer read, but that they no longer have the means. So, the 2 main French-speaking bookstores, which are also publishing houses, bought the rights to numerous books with the support of the French Institute of Beirut. These are, for example, titles from Bayard, Flammarion or Hachette. Then these books are printed here. As a result, on the shelves, they are half as expensive as in France!
This mainly concerns children’s literature, because demand is high. In fact, just under half of schoolchildren still study at least partly in French. They therefore need textbooks and also curriculum books. However, among these books we also find new literary releases. For example, the latest essay by Franco-Lebanese Amine Maalouf, The Labyrinth of the Lost, is sold for 11 euros in Beirut compared to 23 euros in Paris. However, it is exactly the same book, the same quality of paper and obviously the same content.
Historically, Beirut is the publishing house of the Middle East
With only 6 million inhabitants in Lebanon, the local market is not enough. However, this has always been the case and this is surely what allows Lebanese book companies to survive even today. Historically, Beirut is the publishing house of the Middle East. The Lebanese capital owes this position to its multicultural, trilingual society and also to the relative freedom of expression and creation here. The state still practices censorship but it is much less severe than in most Arab countries. Furthermore, in the region, Lebanese know-how in publishing and translation from French and English into Arabic still remains very recognized. As for most arts, the main outlet today is the Gulf countries which organize very popular international book fairs and also have enormous means to finance creation.
A Lebanese cultural exception
Lebanon continues to enjoy its image as a cultured country, a bridge between East and West. As French, we all have dozens of Lebanese authors in mind like Andrée Chedid, Dominique Eddé, Charif Majdalani, and in the new generation, Sabyl Ghoussoub, Goncourt prize for high school students last year. If the book economy is in great difficulty, writers continue to be very present in the literary landscape.
What saves the world of books in Lebanon is also perhaps a form of nostalgia. Nostalgia for what we call here “the golden age”… A largely fantasized period of prosperity from the pre-war decades, in the 50s and 60s, when we encountered Brigitte Bardot on the banks of the swimming pool of the Saint-Georges hotel, or Jean Cocteau at the Baalbek festival, an image of Epinal still very present in the minds of a certain intellectual elite, even if in fact, almost no one has experienced this era. This testifies to the desire to continue to cultivate a form of Lebanese cultural exception, that of a country which, despite collapse and wars, continues to shine on the international artistic scene.
