Rabih Alameddine
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Aaliya Sohbi lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's 'unnecessary appendage.' Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The thirty-seven books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read-- by anyone. After overhearing her neighbors, 'the three witches,' discussing her too-white hair, Aaliya...
2) The hakawati
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father's deathbed. As the family gathers, stories begin to unfold: Osama's 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...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Mina 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...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A gay poet is haunted by war and the AIDs crisis in this "sprawling fever dream of a novel" by the Dos Passos Prize-winning author of An Unnecessary Woman (NPR.org).
Set 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. His memories take him from his maternal upbringing in an Egyptian whorehouse to his adolescence under...
Set 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. His memories take him from his maternal upbringing in an Egyptian whorehouse to his adolescence under...
Author
Language
English
Description
One of the Middle East's most celebrated writers, Rabih Alameddine, discusses his novel An Unnecessary Woman, an intimate and moving portrait of a reclusive book-loving 72-year-old Lebanese woman who views her complicated past through the lens of her favorite works of literature. In conversation with Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge). Mia Dillon will read an excerpt.