Culture January 1, 1

Etel Adnan has two desks. One for writing, the other for painting, they face opposite walls of the quietest room in her Paris home. When she finishes a painting she hangs it over her writing desk to dry. For half a century, Adnan has been revered as a titan of Middle Eastern literature and a beacon of avant-garde poetry. As a writer Adnan is beyond categorization, equal parts philosopher and journalist (she toiled for years as the culture editor of a leading French-language daily in Lebanon); her two dozen books of poetry and prose plumb subjects such as war, exile,