Reading room

The Broken Wings

Kahlil Gibran

A short novel narrated by a young man who at eighteen falls in love with Selma Karamy in Beirut. The archbishop forces her father to marry her to his nephew, and their love burns out in secret meetings until Selma dies in childbirth. Regarded as one of the first modern romantic novels in Arabic, it is both an idealised autobiographical tale and an indictment of women's condition in Lebanese society.