Etel Adnan’s Sitt Marie Rose addresses the city of Beirut as a theme and a setting intermingled with the novel’s structure. Beirut is portrayed as a global city deliberately connected to its inhabitants through the predicament of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. The city becomes a character that participates in developing the plot and unfolding the thematic concerns Adnan offers in her controversial novel. The places and the images show how the city and the characters interact in a critical historical context—the Civil War. This paper investigates how the novel depicts war as a fragmentation and a reconstruction of the self, as manifested by the protagonist, Sitt Marie Rose. It shows the impact of war on transforming people’s perceptions about traditions, social beliefs, and their identities as Lebanese. The war creates a crucial connection between Sitt Marie Rose’s sexual experience, social beliefs, and her sense of identity. I argue that the novel renders reality of the war and the responsibility the individuals share in perpetuating it; increasing its effects, and internalizing and demonstrating its violence among themselves. The paper emphasizes the power of war on the dynamic interplay of responsibility and the reconstruction of the self and others. Informed by theories of city and town (Lewald, Malmstad, Dwyer, Baudrillard, and Williams), I analyze how Beirut gains an all-encompassing identity and becomes synonymous with the triumph of static forms that are alien not only to Beirut but to every city at war.