Emily Nasrallah, a prizewinning Lebanese writer whose novels struggled with bigotry against women, the horrors of civil war and the vacuum left by fleeing refugees, died on Tuesday in Beirut. She was 86.

“Lebanon and the Arab world lost an icon of literature and Lebanese creativity, and a women’s rights activist,” Prime Minister Saad Hariri said in announcing the death.

Ms. Nasrallah, who was also a journalist, a teacher, a lecturer, and a women’s rights advocate, was best known in Lebanon, but some of her books were translated and published abroad.