Unlike pre-modern Arabic literature which celebrates sexuality and sexual desire, contemporary Arabic literature has only occasionally engaged with such themes. Such attempts have been condemned as Adab Saqit, that is, disgraceful or decaying literature. For instance, Layla Ba‘albaki’s "Spaceship of Tenderness to the Moon" (1964) generated major literary and social controversy with its sharp criticism of received ideas about sexuality. Her work was considered foreign to Arabic literature and was severely condemned by the authorities which led to the author’s trial on charges of obscenity and harming the public morality. Consequently, the literary representation of sexuality and sexual desire in that period fell short of reflecting on a society undergoing socio-political transformation. Literary works tackling themes related to sexuality, mostly by male authors, were often framed within the colonial and post-colonial contexts hence reinforcing its “foreignness” one way or another. This paper explores the representation of sexual desire as “indigenous” to contemporary Lebanese literature through a comparative approach to the portrayal of sexuality in classical Arabic literature, especially adab al-Mujun. It argues that current literary examinations of sexual practices are derived from the cultural and socio-political dynamics of the societies in which they are produced. Through a careful analysis of two novels, Rash?d al-Da??f "To Hell with Meryl Streep" (2001) and Ulwiya Subh’s "Mariam of the Stories" (2002), this paper aims to identify stylistic elements of writing sexuality that defies its preconception in contemporary Arabic literature as a product of westernization and adaptations of western literary forms. Both writers deploy the novel as a tool to investigate the emerging sexual consciousness in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. This paper argues that such novels fit into a larger category of contemporary Lebanese war literature which explores other forms of identity (national, gender, ethnic etc.) Therefore, it suggests that the depiction of sexual performance, desire, and libido in Lebanese war literature is highly pertinent to adab al-mujun of classical literature rather than al-adab al-Saqit.