When 19-year-old David Hury arrived in Beirut in 1992, something must have clicked. Since then he’s spent most of his time outside of his native Paris, settling down in Beirut to discover the post-civil war city’s complexities and its surrounding countries.

‘Wiretrapping Beirut’ is an attempt to chronicle the French writer’s personal experiences, who is a correspondent for La Croix, 20 Minutes and the Belgian daily Le Soir. Forty-one short stories and 41 photos give a voice to unexpected, often otherwise unheard, narrators, as Hury paints a multifaceted portrait of the characters that make up the city’s infectious charm as they grapple with the history that surrounds them.