Loss of innocence, as shown earlier a hallmark process hastening the end of childhood, is both a major topic and an organising principle in several post-war Anglophone Lebanese narratives. Having left immediately after the hostilities began in 1975, regardless of age, or having lived through the conflict as an adult with multiple coping strategies at hand (of which writing is one), is much easier than having witnessed the same brutalities and graduated from the ‘school of war’ in one's teens or early twenties. This argument, taken from Alexandre Najjar's 1999 autobiographical novel L'Ecole de la guerre (The School of War), describes the experience of many of his generation. Hanan al-Shaykh, who left almost as soon as the war broke out, describes The Bullet Collection as

Being ‘dazed and confused’ as a result of neither understanding nor adequately coping with the atrocities, resorting instead to aggression towards oneself and others, is an accurate depiction of the many young children and adolescents populating post-war novels by authors who were too young at the time to vent their frustrations artistically.