"Great tragedies in history often generate one epic moment that fully encapsulates the pain, the rage, and the absurdity of it all. The Beirut explosion was, undoubtedly, such an event. Decades of war and destruction, so many lives broken and wasted, a nation humiliated and plundered by those who were supposed to protect it. And suddenly, in a single blast, everything is shattered, everything is exposed, everything is revealed. On that fateful day in August, the authors of this book obviously suffered; they wept; they tried to comfort their loved ones; then they wiped their tears and began to write. Their testimony is powerful, as literature can be powerful when it discards all that is futile to focus on what is humanly essential."–Amin Maalouf, author of Samarkand and The Gardens of Light