​    Hoda Barakat lies somewhere between prolific and restrained: her body of work is not, for the three decades of her writing career, expansive; but the works that she has produced have received substantial attention and acclaim.  This is reflected in the dense, hypnotic quality of her writing, focused on characters more than the backdrop of the Lebanese civil war they exist against.  As Mohammed Berrada notes in Al-Ahram Weekly, her stories “all show a desire to link the lives of the characters with an important event or series of events determining their lives.”  This focus on humanity is the strength and defining characteristic of Barakat’s novels.  Paradox rules the day: characters are struggling to find order amidst the chaos of a society that is tearing itself apart; tenderness is sought amidst violence.
      A reading style that removes the author from consideration, focusing only on the text, is a wise choice when approaching Barakat’s stories.  Her paradox is situated first in the misty area outside of the novel, the life of the writer who creates the story.  Youssef Rakha, writing in Al-Ahram weekly, tells us that her though “palpably personal, her novels bear no resemblance to her life. Barakat writes in the first person, for one thing; her protagonists are invariably men. Her stories take place in Lebanon, often during the last decade or so; the time during which she has been away.”  A majority of the critical discussion around Barakat is in the spheres of Queer and Feminist criticism, examining these male characters and their feminine traits, especially the homosexual Khalil from The Stone of Laughter.  The writer’s paradox creates one in the reader - to understand men, we will dissect a woman’s interpretation of their fictional representation.

      The reader trusts the writer to report through alien eyes upon a situation that occurred far away from her, through the lens of the media and fragmented reports from home.  A part of this schism is reflected in the language of Barakat’s novels, the most salient point that draws readers to them.  Though Barakat was born in Lebanon, she has lived the majority of her life as an expat in Paris.  Despite a PHD in French literature, she chooses to write in Arabic.  Gaelle Raphael writes in a Jadaliyya review of Kingdom of this Earth that Barakat “skillfully intermingles the vernacular with the literal Arabic, presenting a text woven in a beautiful, unique, and innovative language.”  Publisher’s Weekly notes that her works seem destined for an academic audience, working with “impassioned, poetic prose . . . [it]  teems with strange visions, religious diction and imagery, and drifts into discursive riffs on the impossibility of knowing the ’other.’”  Barakat writes to the Arab world from afar in a style steeped in the classics and untroubled by the day-to-day realities of the world on which she reports. 

      This double nature is mirrored in the awards that Barakat has received - The Stone of Laughter won the Al-Naqid prize in 1990, and The Tiller of Waters won the prestigious Naguib Mahouz Medal for Literature in 2000.  To contrast these Arabian accolades, her adopted semi-homeland awarded her the National Order of Merit for her contributions to literature.  The hopeful interpreter of Barakat’s work from another step of equal magnitude away, the English-speaker, must contend with the fact that her highest praises are sung in her languages, Arabic and French, and not in their own. 

Much of the opinion on Barakat’s work available in English is her own, available in translated interviews.    We must trust her, then, to make a recommendation for how to approach and understand her work.  In her own words, excerpted from a Jadaliyya interview concerning Kingdom of this Earth : “This beautiful voice that comes out from deep inside his community and discovers others drowns in the sorrow of his uniqueness. He is stifled by what he knows, which he cannot share with those he loves. It is precisely the others who shape and refine his voice and give it its range and depth.”

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Rapheal, Gaelle. “Hoda Barakat: Kingdom of this Earth​.” Jadaliyya. 22 June 2012. Arab Studies Institute. Web. 1 Dec 2012.​

Mudayi, Suneela. “Interview with Hoda Barakat​.” Jadaliyya. 22 June 2012. Arab Studies Institute. Web. 1 Dec 2012.

Berrada, Mohamed. "The Ordinary Prose of Life." Al-Ahram Weekly. 21-27 July 2005 Issue No.752. Web. 11 Nov. 2012.​

Rakha, Youssef. "Hoda Barakat: Starting Over." Al-Ahram weekly. 25 Nov.-1 Dec. 1999 issue no. 457. Web. 11 Nov. 2012.

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Rev. of Disciples of Passion​, by Hoda Barakat. Publishers Weekly. 3 October 2005. Web. 1 Dec 2012