Mai Ghoussoub is an artist, writer and publisher. She was born and brought up in Beirut, and has lived in London since 1979. She has written numerous articles on culture, aesthetics and middle-eastern issues for international journals. She is the author of Leaving Beirut: Women and the Wars Within (Saqi, 2001), co-editor (with Emma Sinclair-Webb) of Imagined Masculinities: Male Identity and Culture in the Modern Middle East (Saqi, 2006), and a contributor to Anna Wilson, ed., Lebanon, Lebanon (Saqi, 2006).

Mai Ghoussoub died after a short illness on 17 February 2007.

Recent articles

Four stylish young women, an open-topped car, the rubble of war-torn Beirut … but where is the real power of Spencer Platt's prize-winning image, asks Mai Ghoussoub.

(This article was first published on 13 February 2007)

“From the shores of the Mediterranean, I prefer to remember the warmth and the dance. From Beirut I do not want to speak of missed opportunities, but of a city that was opened to travellers, a tolerant harbour.” Artist, entrepreneur, writer, and openDemocracy friend, Mai Ghoussoub explains her love of words, images and ideas.

The war shook the Lebanese inside out. Now – at rallies and parties, in art and life, with white anger and black humour - they are trying to make sense of it all. Mai Ghoussoub shares her journey into hearts and minds.

A true response to the cruelty and humiliation of Abu Ghraib requires not dismissal or evasion but recognition of its disturbing human reality.

The images of torture and humiliation inflicted by Americans on Arabs in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib leave Mai Ghoussoub, a European Arab, in despair.