I, the Divine A Novel in First Chapters

Named by Her grandfather after the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt, the Lebanese-American artist Sarah Nour El-Din tells her story. She begins a memoir, a novel -- and abandons every attempt in the course of the first chapter.What emerges from these fictional fragments is extraordinary -- a woman, and a life, perhaps more real than any we have known in literature. Raised in a hybrid family shaped by divorce and remarriage, and by Beirut in wartime, Sarah finds a fragile peace in self-imposed exile in the United States. Her vibrant character has survived rape, her mother's suicide, her sister's madness, and the impossibility of escaping her family. Her extraordinary dignity is supported by her best friend, a grown-up son, occasional sensual pleasures, and her determination to tell her own story.Passionate in her loves and even in her failures, Sarah Nour El-Din will walk off the page into the reader's life, even as she struggles to compose her own.