Since the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990, Beirut has sought to renew its myth of a “glamorous city”, at the crossroads of East and West. But the succession of destruction and reconstruction cycles is distancing it from this utopia, and plunging the country into uncertainty and despair.

Beirutopia is a visual essay on the socio-political and urban transformation of Beirut, on the various phases of brutal change that have taken place in the city since the civil war, its metamorphoses and its multiple faces and stories. Bringing together images taken by Lebanese photographer Randa Mirza since the early 2000s, Beirutopia is also a projection of Beirut's future. This biographical monograph is a premonition of the country's ongoing collapse.

The book is divided into seven parts - The Sniper (2000-2002); Abandoned Rooms (2005-2006); Parallel Universes (2006-2009); Beirutopia (2010-2019); We Promise, We Deliver (2020-2021); #crisisbillboards (2020-2022); View from Home (2020) - which chronologically reproduce the series that Randa Mirza produced over twenty years in Beirut. Texts by Randa Mirza and curator and writer Rasha Salti complete this visual approach. Other texts by Lebanese authors selected by the photographer from the abundant literature on Beirut provide an insight into the city's tormented history.