Beirut deserves to be celebrated in the present tense. Not only as a city remembered through family photographs, or imagined through stories of a vanished golden age, but as a place whose beauty, imagination and cultural energy remain worthy of attention. Assouline’s Beirut Habibi offers precisely that welcome invitation.
Written by Lebanese novelist and professor Charif Majdalani, the 304-page volume joins luxury publisher Assouline’s Classics Collection with more than 150 illustrations. Its significance extends beyond its format: this is an opportunity to place Beirut’s cultural life before readers who may never have encountered it firsthand.
Photo by Amer Ghazzal
The focus on today’s city is especially refreshing. Gemmayze’s cafés and galleries, the waterfront, Raouché and Elie Saab’s ateliers feature in a portrait attentive to both familiar landmarks and contemporary creativity. Beirut emerges not simply as a collection of buildings, but as an ongoing conversation between those who inherit a city and those who renew it.
That distinction matters. Celebrating contemporary Beirut gives recognition to designers, restaurateurs, artists and others whose daily efforts sustain its appeal. Beauty here deserves to be understood as more than scenery. It is also something people make, nurture and choose to share.
This attention to the present rests on a historical foundation. The book follows Beirut through its Phoenician and Roman roots, Ottoman transformations and French Mandate inheritance. The result is an invitation to appreciate how successive eras have contributed to the city’s character, rather than reducing it to one cherished period.
Majdalani’s involvement adds particular distinction. A Beirut-born writer whose Le Nom des Rois was among the novels selected for the 2025 Prix Goncourt, he brings a literary perspective to a publication concerned with the relationship between place, history and identity.
Picture by Lukas Bischoff
Credit also belongs to Rabih Fakhreddine, founder and group CEO of 7 Management, who initiated the project in 2023 and championed it through to publication. With 7 Management serving as founding partner, the undertaking demonstrates the value of private initiative directed toward cultural recognition. Supporting a book of this kind is an investment in how a city is understood, remembered and introduced to others.
Such patronage deserves encouragement. There is something deeply constructive about turning affection for Beirut into a lasting publication, bringing together literary talent, visual storytelling and the ambition to reach an international readership. It offers a model of cultural commitment worth celebrating.
For Lebanese readers abroad, Beirut Habibi can become a point of connection, something to share with children, friends and colleagues. For newcomers, it can open a door. For those living in Beirut, it offers the pleasure of seeing familiar places approached with care and presented as worthy of sustained attention.
Ultimately, the importance of Beirut Habibi lies in its generosity of perspective. It invites admiration without requiring the city to retreat into its past. Beirut’s history deserves preservation, but its present deserves recognition too. This publication makes room for both, offering a welcome reminder that loving Beirut means taking an interest in what it continues to create, not merely what it once was.
Makram Rabah is the managing editor at Now Lebanon and an Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut, Department of History. His book Conflict on Mount Lebanon: The Druze, the Maronites and Collective Memory (Edinburgh University Press) covers collective identities and the Lebanese Civil War. He tweets at @makramrabah
