Sonja Mejcher-Atassi (born 8 August 1972 in Tübingen, Germany) is a German writer, cultural historian, and professor of Arabic Studies and Comparative Literature at the American University of Beirut.
"In exploring this ecumenical friendship and its artistic, literary, and intellectual legacies, Mejcher-Atassi demonstrates how social biography can provide a picture of the past that is at once more inclusive and more plural.
[6] This work explores the role of literature and memory in times of political crisis, focusing on Elias Khoury's novels written during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990).
“is a pioneering book that sheds light on a wide-ranging view of collecting practices in the Arab world,” writes the Palestinian artist and critic Kamal Boullata, providing a vital source for “readers interested in the cultural history of the region, the origins of modernity and the making of a national identity.”[9] Described by Sabry Hafez as “an Arabian master”[10] in the art of the novel, Munif was also a distinguished intellectual and an expert in petroleum economics.
The volume includes a newly translated essay Munif wrote on the Iraqi artist Jewad Selim and his Monument of Freedom.