In Druze Belgrade, winner of the 2011 Arabic International Prize for Fiction, Lebanese writer Rabee’ Jaber revisits nineteenth century Othoman history to shape his narrative of one Hanna Yacoub, a Christian egg seller from Beirut, mistaken by the authorities for a Druze. Consequently, he is exiled with other Lebanese Druze men, who are being punished by the Othoman Sultan for their attacks on Christians in nearby villages during the civil war of Mount Lebanon in 1860 (considered by historians as a crucial point in the emergence of sectarian identities). The novel traces Hanna’s misadventures, alongside his Druze “brothers,” in Belgrade where he experiences jail, hunger, disease, massacres, and the loss of his companions one by one. Through Hanna’s own suffering, and his being a witness to the suffering of others, Jaber engages with questions of identity, sectarianism, history, and power. Who is Hanna Yacoub? A Christian? A Druze? A Muslim? All three? The novel asks. How does his identity change in the crucible of historical events beyond his power? How does the fluidity of identity become a condition for survival? In questioning the primordial view of identity that sectarianism assumes, Jaber suggests alternative ways of defining the self: through suffering, solidarity, and what Edward Said calls affiliation (vs. filiation). But this optimism, I argue, exists in tension with, and is constantly threatened by, the novel’s bleak view of history as capricious, random, and violent. This pessimism can be seen in the novel’s style, where description is privileged over narration, which, according to some theorists of the historical novel (George Lucac, Frederick Jameson), renders characters like Hanna Yacoub as mere spectators of events, rather than active historical agents.