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This book examines the history of diplomatic relations between the United States and Lebanon during a transformational period for Lebanon and a time of dynamic changes in U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Drawing on tens of thousands of pages of declassified materials from U.S. archives and a variety of Arabic and other non-English sources, the book provides a new interpretation of Lebanon's slide into civil war, as well as insight into the strategy behind U.S. diplomatic initiatives toward the Arab–Israeli conflict. During this period, the book argues that Lebanon was often a pawn in the games of larger powers. After a series of internal crises in 1969, 1970, and 1973, the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975. The conflict reached a temporary halt after a Syrian military intervention the following year, but this was only an end to the first stage of what would be a sixteen-year civil war. During these crises, the United States sought to help the Lebanese government in a variety of ways, including providing military aid to the Lebanese military, convincing Arab countries to take measures to help the Lebanese government, mediating Lebanon's relations with Israel, and even supporting certain militias.

Zaynab, first published in 1913, is widely cited as the first Arabic novel, yet the previous eight decades saw hundreds of novels translated into Arabic from English and French. This vast literary corpus influenced generations of Arab writers but has, until now, been considered a curious footnote in the genre's history. Incorporating these works into the history of the Arabic novel, this book offers a transformative new account of modern Arabic literature, world literature, and the novel. This book rewrites the history of the global circulation of the novel by moving Arabic literature from the margins of comparative literature to its center. Considering the wide range of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century translation practices, the book argues that Arabic translators did far more than copy European works; they authored new versions of them, producing sophisticated theorizations of the genre. These translations and the reading practices they precipitated form the conceptual and practical foundations of Arab literary modernity, necessitating an overhaul of our notions of translation, cultural exchange, and the global. The book shows how translators theorized the Arab world not as Europe's periphery but as an alternative center in a globalized network. It affirms the central place of (mis)translation in both the history of the novel in Arabic and the novel as a transnational form itself.