Hoda Barakat’s writing has been praised for its classical, Lebanese-inflected Arabic, and for its bold exploration of ethical, social, and psychological collapse exposed in times of war. Barakat pushes the boundaries of narration by internalizing the war in fiction and interrogating the limits of language, of its ability to capture violence, madness, and desire. All of her novels and short stories are first-person male narratives, complicating gender perceptions and revealing how entwined sex, violence, and identity are. Barakat’s Arabic language unfolds through a uniquely poetic and philosophical prose.