''House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East'' is a 2012 book by

Anthony Shadid Anthony Shadid (September 26, 1968 – February 16, 2012) was a foreign correspondent for ''The New York Times'' based in Baghdad and Beirut who won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting twice, in 2004 and 2010.New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' journalist.

Story

''House of Stone'' details Shadid's return to and rebuilding of his family's home in

Marjayoun Marjayoun ( ar, مرج عيون: Lebanese pronunciation), also Marj 'Ayoun, Marjuyun or Marjeyoun (lit. "meadow of springs") and Jdeideh / Jdeida / Jdeidet Marjeyoun, is a Lebanese town and an administrative district, the Marjeyoun District, in ...

( ar, مرجعيون: Lebanese pronunciation), also known as 'Jdeideh / Jdeida / Jdeidet Marjeyoun, in the administrative district of

Marjeyoun District The Marjeyoun District is a district in the Nabatieh Governorate of Lebanon. The capital of the district is Marjeyoun. Marjeyoun Marjayoun ( ar, مرج عيون: Lebanese pronunciation), also Marj 'Ayoun, Marjuyun or Marjeyoun (lit. "meadow o ...

, in the

Nabatieh Governorate Nabatieh Governorate ( ar, محافظة النبطية, ') is one of the nine governorates of Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in West ...

Southern Lebanon Southern Lebanon () is the area of Lebanon comprising the South Governorate and the Nabatiye Governorate. The two entities were divided from the same province in the early 1990s. The Rashaya and Western Beqaa Districts, the southernmost distric ...

. It recounts the story of his family, particularly his great-grandfathers Isber Samara and Ayyash Shadid of the Bani Ghassan, originally from Yemen via Jordan and the

Hauran The Hauran ( ar, حَوْرَان, ''Ḥawrān''; also spelled ''Hawran'' or ''Houran'') is a region that spans parts of southern Syria and northern Jordan. It is bound in the north by the Ghouta oasis, eastwards by the al-Safa (Syria), al-Safa ...

("Houran" in the book). It was this house that Shadid was rebuilding. He interweaves history and physical descriptions of the region, including nearby

Mount Hermon Mount Hermon ( ar, جبل الشيخ or جبل حرمون / ALA-LC: ''Jabal al-Shaykh'' ("Mountain of the Sheikh") or ''Jabal Haramun''; he, הַר חֶרְמוֹן, ''Har Hermon'') is a mountain cluster constituting the southern end of the ...

and the

Litani River The Litani River ( ar, نهر الليطاني, Nahr al-Līṭānī), the classical Leontes ( grc-gre, Λέοντες, Léontes, lions), is an important water resource in southern Lebanon. The river rises in the fertile Beqaa Valley, west of B ...

Publication

The book was published in 2012, shortly after Shadid died while covering the Syrian civil war).

Awards and honors

*2012

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

(Nonfiction), finalist. *2012

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Anthony Shadid Anthony Shadid (September 26, 1968 – February 16, 2012) was a foreign correspondent for ''The New York Times'' based in Baghdad and Beirut who won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting twice, in 2004 and 2010.Marjayoun Marjayoun ( ar, مرج عيون: Lebanese pronunciation), also Marj 'Ayoun, Marjuyun or Marjeyoun (lit. "meadow of springs") and Jdeideh / Jdeida / Jdeidet Marjeyoun, is a Lebanese town and an administrative district, the Marjeyoun District, in ...

References

2012 non-fiction books American memoirs Books published posthumously Houghton Mifflin books {{MEast-hist-book-stub