War continues to occupy an undeniable presence in the Lebanese literary imagination. However, Lebanese authors are diverting more of their attention to the exploration of evolving notions of gender, sexuality, and national identity in contemporary Lebanese society. Rashid al-Daif’s Tistifil Meryl Streep (2001) depicts the trials and tribulations of Rashoud, a Lebanese man who finds himself emasculated by his wife’s seemingly transgressive behavior. Projecting his marital insecurities on the American actor, Meryl Streep, he challenges the Western concept of “women’s liberation,” which he credits for undermining tradition and eroding family ties. More recently, in Sikirida’s Cat (2014), al-Daif tells the story of the Ethiopian Sikirida and her son Radwan, who must deal with stigmatization because of Sikirida’s “foreignness” and her infamous promiscuity. Radwan, too, has his share of sexual adventures with the disabled Amal, whose paralyzed body is by no means a hindrance to her budding sexuality. By narrating the lives of protagonists who normally exist at the margins of Lebanese society, al-Daif stages issues of race/ethnicity, sexuality, and disability at the forefront of his narrative, while setting the text against the backdrop of a brutally sectarian war. Similarly, Alexandra Chreiteh’s Dai’man Coca-Cola (2008) hints at Lebanon’s volatile political situation, but the novel’s main concerns revolve around its protagonists’ struggles with femininity, unplanned pregnancy, and rape and the repercussions of these struggles on the protagonists’ subjectivities. Chreiteh’s most recent novel, Ali and his Russian Mother (2010), which takes place at the outset of the July 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war, is also less concerned with death and destruction as it is with Ali’s struggles with his homosexuality and mixed heritage. Drawing on critical studies of race, gender and sexuality, and subjectivity, this presentation offers a comparative analysis of al-Daif’s and Chreiteh’s novels. I argue that the contemporary Lebanese novel, in its exploration of evolving notions of Lebanese womanhood and manhood, gives voice to emergent subjectivities that—while still marginal—are no longer subdued by dominant discourses of disavowal and exclusion. Furthermore, no longer are the struggles of nontraditional, non-heteronormative characters foreshadowed by the text’s preoccupation with war and security (or the lack thereof). By interrogating the precarious discourses of virginity, homophobia, and xenophobia, and by deconstructing hegemonic notions of gender and citizenship, the Lebanese novel offers a constructive intervention that interrogates long-enduring narratives about it means to be an “authentic” Lebanese.