The Ruin to come, Walid SadekThese collected essays, written in Beirut over a period of 10 years between 2006 and 2016, look at the conditions of living under a temporality theorized as the "protracted now" of a civil war, one structurally capable of perpetuating the conditions of its own dominance. This protracted now, these essays argue, remains untranquil in the many unfinished strains of a troubled history that resist falling back into a settled and distant past.