Tell the Running Water, Fiction, Published by Sceptre, 2001, 224 pages.

Praise for Tell the Running Water:

“In El-Zein’s elegy for Lebanon’s lost youth, dispassion and stylistic poise keep the horror of civil war at a just bearable distance. A remarkable first novel.”
Felicity Bloch, The Age

“…in his ambitious and highly charged novel, Tell the Running Water, Abbas El-Zein evokes the madness that gripped his country of birth from 1975 until 1990.”
Tony Maniaty, The Weekend Australian

“Documentary realism gives way to poetical grace in this first novel of destruction and self-discovery.”
Debra Adelaide, The Sydney Morning Herald, Weekend Edition

“Sometimes distressing but often compelling, Tell the Running Water is a powerful anti-war statement.”
Penelope Davie, The Courier Mail

“Lyrical, elegant novel.”
Heather Tyler, The Daily Telegraph

“El-Zein writes with insight, elegance and humility.”
Lisa Slater, Good Reading Magazine

“As timely as today’s headline, and as timeless as a Levantine love song, Abbas El-Zein draws on his own experience of Beirut’s bitter war to create a novel that is elegant and elegiac. This writer has the rarest combination of gifts: a scientist’s precision and a poet’s eloquence.”
Geraldine Brooks, author of Nine Parts Desire and People of the Book