Rabih Alameddine

From the inimitable Rabih Alameddine - National Book Award finalist and winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award - comes a tragicomic saga set in Lebanon, a modern story of family, memory, and the unbreakable (and insane) attachment of a son and his mother.In a tiny Beirut apartment, sixty-three-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and 'the neighborhood homosexual,' Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son's privacy as a personal affront. She craves nothing more than to know the ins and outs of Raja's work life and love life, boundaries be damned.When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn't be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja itching for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to leave behind.Wickedly funny, heartbreaking, and told in Raja's irresistible voice, The True, True Story of Raja the Gullible dances across six decades to tell the unforgettable story of a singular life and its absurdities - a tale of mistakes, self-discovery, trauma, and maybe even forgiveness. Above all, it's a wild and sparkling celebration of love.

Alameddine''s astonishingly inventive, wonderfully exuberant novel takes readers from the shimmering dunes of ancient Egypt to the war-torn streets of 21-century Lebanon. "The Hakawati" is a modern "Arabian Nights"--a funny, captivating novel that enchants and dazzles.

Escuchad. Dejad que os cuente una historia. En 2003, Osama al-Kharrat regresa a Beirut, tras muchos años en Estados Unidos, para visitar a su padre agonizante. Allí entra de nuevo en contacto con su infancia, con la traumática guerra contra Israel, pero sobre todo con la figura de su abuelo, un hakawati o contador de historias profesional. Sus historias Escuchad. Dejad que os cuente una historia. En 2003, Osama al-Kharrat regresa a Beirut, tras muchos años en Estados Unidos, para visitar a su padre agonizante. Allí entra de nuevo en contacto con su infancia, con la traumática guerra contra Israel, pero sobre todo con la figura de su abuelo, un hakawati o contador de historias profesional. Sus historias —sobre su llegada al Líbano como huérfano de las guerras turcas— se mezclan con cuentos tradicionales del Medio Oriente reimaginados, desde Abraham e Isaac hasta Fátima. Como un verdadero hakawati, Rabih Alameddine nos brinda Las mil y una noches de este siglo: una novela divertida y cautivadora que encanta desde sus primeras líneas.

Escolteu. Deixeu-me que us guiï en un viatge als confins de la imaginació, deixeu-me que us expliqui una història… Així és com Ossama, un home que acaba d'arribar a Beirut, ens explicarà al llarg d'aquestes pàgines els secrets de la seva estrafolària família i en especial del seu avi, un home que havia dedicat la seva vida a l'il·lustre ofici d'explicar històries als bars i als mercats. No hi havia ningú que com ell sabés parlar d'herois i brivalls, ni de princeses i esclaves, de tresors amagats en ciutats encantades, ningú no sabia teixir tan sàviament els fils de la realitat i la llegenda, ningú, al cap i a la fi, millor que ell per fer de la seva vida un conte màgic. Ossama decideix seguir les passes del seu avi i L'home que explicava històries és la seva manera de transportar-nos a un món on tot és possible, fins i tot la felicitat.

Escuchad. Dejad que os guíe en un viaje hacia los confines de la imaginación. Dejad que os cuente una historia... Así empieza a hablar Osama, el hombre recién llegado a Beirut que a lo largo de estas paginas nos desvelara los secretos de su estrafalaria familia y muy en especial del abuelo, un hombre que habia dedicado su vida al ilustre oficio de contar historias en bares y mercados. Nadie como el sabia hablar de heroes y villanos, de princesas y esclavas, de tesoros ocultos en ciudades encantadas; nadie sabia mezclar tan sabiamente los hilos de la realidad y la leyenda; nadie, en fin, mejor que el para hacer de la vida un cuento magico. Osama decide seguir los pasos del abuelo y El contador de historias es su manera de llevarnos a un mundo donde todo es posible, incluso la felicidad. Si te apasionan las historias de amor, lee El contador de historias . Si prefieres las aventuras, lee El contador de historias. Si lees para estar informado, lee El contador de historias. Si solo lees clasicos, tambien disfrutaras con El contador de historias. Rabih Alameddine es nuestro contador de historias y muy pronto todo el mundo sabra pronunciar su nombre. Amy Tan

"""Hakawati. Il cantore di storie"" di Rabih Alameddine è un caso letterario: sia perché l''autore, giordano, di origine libanese apre una finestra su un mondo problematico; sia perché, mantenendo un

Le temps d'une nuit, dans la salle d'attente d'un hôpital psychiatrique, Jacob, poète d'origine yéménite, revient sur les événements qui ont marqué sa vie : son enfance dans un bordel égyptien, son a

Sarah decide contar su historia -a veces en forma de memorias, a veces como pieza teatral, otras como novela-, y el resultado es un mosaico narrativo repleto de humor astuto y realismo, siempre atractivamente incompleto. Capitulo tras capitulo, desecha el principio y vuelve a empezar de nuevo.Hija de madre norteamericana y padre libanes, educada en una familia hibrida marcada por un divorcio y una segunda boda, y por un Beirut en guerra, Sarah encuentra una fragil paz en su exilio en Estados Unidos. Su vibrante espiritu ha sobrevivido a la violencia, al suicidio de su madre, a la locura de su hermana, a la imposibilidad de escapar de su aterradora madastra.

By National Book Award finalist and Dos Passos Prize winner, Rabih Alameddine, comes a transporting new novel about an Arab American trans woman's personal journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos island.'A beautiful, well paced, enraging, funny and heartbreaking book' the Guardian'Spectacular . . . Alameddine's irreverent prose evokes the old master storytellers from my own Middle Eastern home . . . deeply poignant' New York TimesMina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor, arrives at the infamous Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece, after being urgently summoned for help by her friend who runs an NGO there. Alienated from her family except for her beloved brother, Mina has avoided being so close to her homeland for decades. But with a week off work and apart from her wife of thirty years, Mina hopes to accomplish something meaningful, among the abundance of Western volunteers who pose for selfies with beached dinghies and the camp's children. Soon, a boat crosses bringing Sumaiya, a fiercely resolute Syrian matriarch with terminal liver cancer. Determined to protect her children and husband at all costs, Sumaiya refuses to alert her family to her diagnosis. Bonded together by Sumaiya's secret, a deep connection sparks between the two women, and as Mina prepares a course of treatment with the limited resources on hand, she confronts the circumstances of the migrants' displacement, as well as her own constraints in helping them.

Here is a book, full of story, unrepentantly political at every level. At a time when many western writers seem to be in retreat from saying anything that could be construed as political, Alameddine says it all, shamelessly, gloriously and, realised like his Satan, in the most stylish of formsthe GuardianSet over the course of one night in the waiting room of a psych clinic, The Angel of History follows Yemeni-born poet Jacob as he revisits the events of his life, from his maternal upbringing in an Egyptian whorehouse to his adolescence under the aegis of his wealthy father and his life as a gay Arab man in San Francisco at the height of AIDS. Hovered over by the presence of alluring, sassy Satan who taunts Jacob to remember his painful past and dour, frigid Death who urges him to forget and give up on life, Jacob is also attended to by 14 saints. Set in Cairo and Beirut; Sanaa, Stockholm, and San Francisco; Alameddine gives us a charged philosophical portrait of a brilliant mind in crisis. This is a profound, philosophical and hilariously winning story of the war between memory and oblivion we wrestle with every day of our lives.A profoundly beautiful novel that infolds the political with the personal in unexpected and new ways . . . An extraordinary book Neel Mukherjee, New Statesman, Books of the Year 2016His stories take the reader into the labyrinth that is the mind . . . The Angel of History is digressive and daringthe EconomistAlameddine has created a scintillating, original work whose moral complexity and detail of observation are wholly contemporary and entirely his ownSpectator

WINNER OF THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION 2022A beautiful, well paced, enraging, funny and heartbreaking bookthe Guardian Spectacular . . . Alameddines irreverent prose evokes the old master storytellers from my own Middle Eastern home . . . deeply poignantNew York TimesMina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor, arrives at the infamous Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece, after being urgently summoned for help by her friend who runs an NGO there. Alienated from her family except for her beloved brother, Mina has avoided being so close to her homeland for decades. But with a week off work and apart from her wife of thirty years, Mina hopes to accomplish something meaningful, among the abundance of Western volunteers who pose for selfies with beached dinghies and the camps children. Soon, a boat crosses bringing Sumaiya, a fiercely resolute Syrian matriarch with terminal liver cancer. Determined to protect her children and husband at all costs, Sumaiya refuses to alert her family to her diagnosis. Bonded together by Sumaiyas secret, a deep connection sparks between the two women, and as Mina prepares a course of treatment with the limited resources on hand, she confronts the circumstances of the migrants displacement, as well as her own constraints in helping them.Not since the inimitable Aaliya of An Unnecessary Woman has Rabih Alameddine conjured such a winsome heroine to lead us to one of the most wrenching conflicts of our time. Cunningly weaving in stories of other refugees into Minas singular own, The Wrong End of the Telescope is a bedazzling tapestry of both tragic and amusing portraits of indomitable spirits facing this humanitarian crisis.Alameddine hits a distinctly contemporary note with this new book about refugees . . . it feels totally authentic Sunday Times

In this delightful novel, Alameddine takes his greatest risks yet, and succeeds brilliantly, in a work that while marked by radical formal innovation, manages to be warm, sad, funny and movingMichael ChabonNamed by her grandfather after the Divine Sarah Bernhardt, Sarah Nour El-Din grows up in Beirut against the tense background of civil war. But the young Sarah finds pleasure in the everyday - her first cigarette, first kiss, seeking revenge on her tight-lipped stepmother. Then, with adulthood, comes an awareness of the fragility of life. After two failed marriages, the loss of her son, the death of one sister and the imprisonment of another, Sarah begins to tell her story. But this story is not so easy to tell.A novel written entirely in first chapters, I, THE DIVINE is an honest and touching story of one womans struggle to come to terms with her past.

Lauteur du prix Femina étranger 2016 revient avec un roman brillant et terriblement actuel." Cest toi qui as suggéré que jécrive ça. Toi, lécrivain, tu nas pas pu. Tu as essayé décrire lhistoire du refugie. Plusieurs fois, a de nombreuses reprises. Tu as echoue. Et echoue encore. Peut-etre echoue mieux. Il nempeche, tu nas pas pu. Plus de deux ans apres que nous nous sommes rencontres a Lesbos, tu essayais encore. Tu ty es attaque par un versant, puis par un autre, en vain. Tu etais trop implique, incapable de te depetrer toi-meme de lhistoire. Tu as dit que tu narrivais pas a trouver la bonne distance. Tu netais pas capable de trouver les mots justes, meme apres nombre de seances sur le canape de ton psychiatre. " [...] Et quoi que tu fasses, as-tu dit, ne lintitule pas Lesbienne libanaise a Lesbos, je ten supplie. " Une plongee bouleversante au cur dun drame humanitaire ou se croisent les destins singuliers desprits rebelles qui ont en commun lexil, la perte et lespoir.Au centre vide de tout horizon figure dans la liste du Pen Faulkner Award, le plus prestigieux des prix litteraires americains Rabih Alameddine remporte le prix PEN/Faulkner de la Fiction 2022 pour ce roman. le plus prestigieux des prix litteraires americains.

L'auteur du prix Femina étranger 2016 revient avec un roman brillant et terriblement actuel." C'est toi qui as suggéré que j'écrive ça. Toi, l'écrivain, tu n'as pas pu. Tu as essayé d'écrire l'histoire du refugie. Plusieurs fois, a de nombreuses reprises. Tu as echoue. Et echoue encore. Peut-etre echoue mieux. Il n'empeche, tu n'as pas pu. Plus de deux ans apres que nous nous sommes rencontres a Lesbos, tu essayais encore. Tu t'y es attaque par un versant, puis par un autre, en vain. Tu etais trop implique, incapable de te depetrer toi-meme de l'histoire. Tu as dit que tu n'arrivais pas a trouver la bonne distance. Tu n'etais pas capable de trouver les mots justes, meme apres nombre de seances sur le canape de ton psychiatre." [...] Et quoi que tu fasses, as-tu dit, ne l'intitule pasLesbienne libanaise a Lesbos, je t'en supplie. "

Stunning New York Times Book ReviewHere it comes, the book of the year, on its own magic carpet. No book this bewitching has ever felt so important; no book this important has ever been so lovingly enchanted. The Hakawati is both a snapshot of our current crisis, and a story for the ages. What else can we ask the djinn of literature for? Andrew Sean Greer, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning LessIn 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his fathers deathbed. As the family gathers, stories begin to unfold: Osamas grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching tales are interwoven with classic stories of the Middle East. Here are Abraham and Isaac; Ishmael, father of the Arab tribes; the beautiful Fatima; Baybars, the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders; and a host of mischievous imps. Through Osama, we also enter the world of the contemporary Lebanese men and women whose stories tell a larger, heartbreaking tale of seemingly endless war, conflicted identity, and survival. With The Hakawati, Rabih Alameddine has given us an Arabian Nights for this century.Sharp, seductive storytellingO, The Oprah Magazine

Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her familys unnecessary appendage. Every year, she translates a new favourite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The thirty-seven books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read - by anyone.This breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman follows Aaliyas digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut. Colourful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and Aaliyas own volatile past. As she tries to overcome her ageing body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left.A love letter to literature and its power to define who we are, the prodigiously gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a magnificent rendering of one womans life in the Middle East.

Mina Simpson , médica libanesa radicada en Estados Unidos, llega al campo de refugiadosde Moria, en Lesbos. Viaja sola, un retorno a un país tan cercano a su hogar y que haevitado durante décadas. Viene a ayudar, pero tambien a entender. En medio del caos y ladesesperacion, entre voluntarios, medicos y miles de desplazados que huyen de la guerra,Mina descubre que su gesto humanitario es, en realidad, un viaje hacia la memoria, laidentidad y los limites de la empatia.

In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his fathers deathbed. As the family gathers, stories begin to unfold: Osamas grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching tales are interwoven with classic stories of the Middle East. Here are Abraham and Isaac; Ishmael, father of the Arab tribes; the beautiful Fatima; Baybars, the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders; and a host of mischievous imps. Through Osama, we also enter the world of the contemporary Lebanese men and women whose stories tell a larger, heartbreaking tale of seemingly endless war, conflicted identity, and survival. With The Hakawati, Rabih Alameddine has given us an Arabian Nights for this century.