Lifted by the Great Nothing

Max lives with his father Rasheed and doesn t remember his mother, who was murdered by burglars before they emigrated from Beirut to New Jersey. Rasheed is enamoured of American culture and tries to shed his Lebanese heritage completely. He has a single purpose in life: to provide Max with a joyful childhood. But sometimes his efforts do more harm than good, and when Max is seventeen, he discovers that his father has been lying to him - about everything - and their peaceful universe is destroyed. And so, Max ventures on an uncertain mission to Beirut to find what he hadn t known was lost.