Rabih Alameddine was born in Amman, Jordan to Lebanese parents, and grew up in Kuwait and Lebanon. He was educated in England and America, and has an engineering degree from UCLA and an MBA from the University of San Francisco. He is also the author of the novel Koolaids: Or The Art of War, the story collection, The Perv, and, most recently, I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters. His pieces have appeared in Zoetrope, The Evening Standard and Al-Hayat, among others. Mr. Alameddine, a painter as well as an author, has had solo gallery exhibitions in cities throughout the United States, Europe and the Middle East. He has lectured at numerous universities including M.I.T and the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. Mr. Alameddine was the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in 2002. He divides his time between San Francisco and Beirut.
“Here is absolute beauty. One of the finest novels I've read in
years.”
—Junot Díaz
“Stunning.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Sharp, seductive storytelling.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine
“Delightful. . . . Alameddine juxtaposes truth and fiction,
contemporary lust and bawdy tales of the past, today's grief and
sorrow in the ancient world.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“A wonderful book-poignant, profane.... This novel will keep you
transfixed.”
—The Boston Globe
“Alameddine's intoxicating, ambitious, multi-layered new novel is a
marvel of storytelling bravado.”
—The Seattle Times
“A fantastic tapestry . . . After reading [The Hakawati] I didn’t
want to return to the mundane world. [Osama al-Kharrat] returns to
his native Beirut after long years spent in Los Angeles to visit
the bedside of his dying father. That’s the brightest thread of
this tale. But this is the story of a thousand threads interweaving
legends, fables and parable. There are the mythic wars of Arab
lore, and the real civil war in Lebanon. . . . A story that ranges
from the seven gates of the underworld to a deathbed in Beirut
could only be told by a real storyteller, a hakawati–a spellbinder.
. . . We meet many, many other characters here: Fatima, who appears
to be a goddess, we meet Baybars, the slave king, we meet imps,
djinn, witches and horses with magical powers. They’re the
atmosphere, and the real people feel like mortals walking around in
this fairytale atmosphere. . . . In this book, people are often
entering the world of legend when the real world is painful. And
that is, after all, one of the places that the imagination springs
from. In other words, when [Osama’s] fictive family is suffering
the real pains of the Lebanese civil war, the mother in this book
will say, tell me a story, distract me, enchant me, and the
imagination serves that function too. . . . I really liked that
very gentle image, that Osama, even as his father is breathing in,
breathing out, breathing in, breathing out, is going to begin a new
tale.”
—Jacki Lyden, senior correspondent, All Things Considered
“Exhilarating . . . In Alameddine’s world there are magic carpets,
but they can misbehave in midair. There are imps, but they can end
up in an imp stew or be transformed into colorful squawking
parrots. And there are Kama-Sutra topping tales of sex and
seduction. Alameddine has great fun telling this story, and it’s
infectious. . . . Both dazzling and dizzying. [The Hakawati]
meanders, doubles back, moves back and forward in time, takes off
on tangents and then eats its own tail. There are stories within
stories within stories. . . . It’s an audacious all-you-can-eat
buffet . . . Alameddine’s talent is that each of these tales is as
picaresque as the next, each feels just as real, just as
contemporary. In some ways the stories leak into each other, full
of the same ingredients of love, family, betrayal and sex. . . .
Alameddine is a wonderful raconteur and teller of tales, as
effortless in conjuring up a war in ancient times as a garden party
in Los Angeles. He can be serious and poignant, [and he] also
refuses to be awed by the sweep of history—at one point producing a
prophet who announces he’s not going to eat any more broccoli.”
—Sandip Roy, San Jose Mercury News
“A riot of stories concerning the rise of the eccentric al-Kharrat
family. Osama [al-Kharrat]’s waggish grandfather was a hakawati, or
storyteller, and his classic tales of princes, genies, and
wise-cracking seductresses are worthy of Scheherazade. Rabih
Alameddine has a deft, winsome touch.”
—Karen Karbo, Entertainment Weekly
“Bravely ambitious . . . This is the stuff of the day-to-day
becoming extraordinary, the work of the hakawati, the storyteller:
merging the mundane and the fabulous. The Hakawati is
made up of many stories, and like Scheherazade’s famous nights, it
is intended to keep death at bay, while in serpentine fashion
resurrecting the world in words with each day’s dawn. At the center
of the novel is the family saga of Osama al-Kharrat, who after 26
years in Los Angeles has returned to his roots in Lebanon to stand
vigil at his father’s deathbed . . . Family tales are shared, and
passionate descriptions bring to full realization characters such
as Osama’s sophisticated and headstrong mother or his humorous and
warmly affectionate Uncle Jihad. . . . A skillfully wrought,
emotional story . . . Alameddine should be commended for the
chances he takes, and [his] prodigious skills . . . He deserves
credit for telling a story the West should pay attention to, and
evoking the diversity of the Arab world (Christian, Muslim, Jew and
even Druze, they are all here) that is often taken for granted in
our ever narrowing perspective of righteousness.”
—David Hellman, San Francisco Chronicle
“Captivating . . . A wildly imaginative patchwork of tales
improbably threading together Greek mythology, biblical parables,
Arab-Islamic lore, and even modern Lebanese politics [that] charm
and amuse. . . . Most of these tales originate with narrator
Osama’s late paternal grandfather, whose fascinating childhood and
multiple identities forged a masterful hakawati, the Levantine
Arabic word for ‘storyteller.’ While Osama’s rather stodgy father
had no time for the old man’s colorful, moving and grotesque yarns,
Osama imbibed them with gusto. As a result, he has become a walking
treasure-trove of fables and historical legends. . . . Somewhere
between bitter reality and escapist fantasy, the ever-humorous
author provides the stoically optimistic view of the sputtering
Lebanese experiment: ‘You take different groups, put them on top of
each other, simmer for a thousand years, keep adding more and more
strange tribes, simmer for another few thousand years, salt and
pepper with religion, and what you get is a delightful mess of a
stew that still tastes delectable and exotic, no matter how many
times you partake of it.’”
—Rayyan Al-Shawaf, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Alameddine is an embellisher extraordinaire. His new novel,The
Hakawati, is a big book, both literally (513 pages) and
figuratively, and it’s attracting critical attention for its scope
and ingenuity. In the novel, scores of stories are woven through
the life of a Lebanese family, the al-Kharrats. It is told mostly
through the eyes of Osama, the young son. Osama is a good listener,
and everyone likes to tell him stories. Some of them are true–or
true enough. Some are folk tales. Some are about daily life in
Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. Some are about Baybars, a
13th-century warrior and sultan of Egypt and Syria. And some come
directly from Mr. Alameddine’s Technicolor imagination.”
—Cynthia Crossen, The Wall Street Journal
“Four stars. Astonishingly inventive . . . Stunningly retold
stories [that] reintroduce readers to familiar characters like
Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael and the fabled Fatima [and] also the
stories of contemporary Lebanese who have suffered the torments of
war for decades and how they carry on with their daily lives in
spite of all that insanity. . . . Alameddine’s enchanting language
[has] a fascinating, lyrical quality . . . He juggles his many
narratives effortlessly, enhancing each with small details from the
world they inhabit—caring for pigeons on a rooftop, the way a cold
beer tastes after a desert trek. The real hakawati, here, is
Alameddine.”
—Beth Dugan, Time Out Chicago
“Be thankful for Rabih Alameddine’s new novel, The Hakawati.
In one of the most delightful books of the year, Alameddine relates
many of the stories that unite the people living in the Middle
East. The narrator’s family are Druze living in Lebanon, but the
stories we hear come from Cairo, Damascus and Turkey as well as
from the Bible and the Quran. Modern readers have nothing to fear
from Alameddine as the novel is contemporary as well as ancient.
David Bowie and Santa Claus can be found in these stories as well
as Abraham, Orpheus, jinnis, sultans, crusaders, magic carpets,
virgins, houris and, of course, evil viziers. The story of why
Aladdin is Chinese is superb. The Hakawati is a book to
be read and read again.”
—Chris Watson, Santa Cruz Sentinel
“Mesmerizing . . . Alameddine’s book is sui generis . . . like a
magic carpet transporting you to a place where fables and history,
weddings and funerals, murder and sacrifice, people so real you can
almost touch them, and jinnis and witches and beys and imps and
prophets who take the form of parrots coexist . . . More than any
book in recent memory, The Hakawati, is—at its very big
heart—all about the importance of telling stories . . . Funny and
heartbreaking, with an ending that turns the novel on its head,
transforming the central character and giving new provenance to
every detail. . . . Pure genius.”
—Elizabeth Dewberry, Paste Magazine
“If you like The Arabian Nights, check out The
Hakawati. . . . Fables, both old and new, reinterpreted by
Alameddine, weave throughout a modern-day story: Lebanese narrator
Osama al-Kharrat’s arrival in Beirut from Los Angeles to visit his
ailing father, himself the son of a hakawati, or storyteller. In
the end, the tales create an intricate tapestry that displays the
complexities of a family and a culture.”
—Don George, National Geographic Traveler
“In this entertaining, kaleidoscopic novel, a young
Lebanese-American returns to Beirut to visit his dying father.
Taking a cue from The Arabian Nights, Alameddine intertwines
this story with myriad others, drawing on the history and legends
of the Middle East, from Abraham and Fatima to the Crusades.”
—Details
“Dazzling . . . weaves together spellbinding reimaginings of two of
the Arab world’s most bewitching tales—that of Fatima and Baybars,
the famous slave king, and of Osama al-Kharrat, a Lebanese expat
who returns to Beirut to be at his dying father’s bedside.”
—Condé Nast Traveler
“A big, giant treat of a book . . . Rabih Alameddine shines as a
storyteller and a novelist, and nowhere are the distinctions
between the two vocations more evident than in this lovely,
captivating tome. As a storyteller, Alameddine dazzles us with
bejeweled adventure stories of lust and love, murder, scandal, and
war. As a novelist, he crafts a complex structure, shaping subtle
mirrors between the flights of fancy and the central story of a
family in war-torn Beirut, gently shifting the perspective until,
like a mosaic, the tiny pieces begin to take shape, and the real
picture of the novel emerges. Like a merry-making band of magic
carpets, the folk tales and adventure stories woven into the
central story of a Lebanese family whisk the reader away again and
again, acting as both mischievous troublemakers and sage guides.
Part of the great joy of reading The Hakawati is the
escapist pleasure found in these fanciful digressions . . .
Bewitched by Alameddine’s fine prose and addictive tales . . . I
lost myself in tales of Fatima and her jinnis, sultans and their
great battles, Abraham, Sarah and Hagar reinvented and made real,
and watched as they sent echoes into the deeper, bleaker story of a
family and their own stories, ancient legacies and culture rent by
war. . . . My advice to potential readers is this: Surrender to the
hakawati. Get on this magic carpet, and let him tell you a story.
In fact, let him tell you one thousand stories. He’ll handle all
the details, and you can sit back and enjoy the ride.”
—Lucia Silva, Bookbrowse Recommends
“Not just a story within a story but hundreds of stories within a
story, a 513-page macramé with myriad threads.”
—Anneli Rufus, East Bay Express
“Rabih Alameddine may be one of the most brilliant Middle Eastern
authors writing in English today. The Hakawatimasterfully
interweaves the contemporary story of Osama al-Kharrat, a
Maronite/Druze Lebanese who has settled in Los Angeles and returns
to his father’s deathbed in Beirut, with re-imagined classic tales
of the Middle East [that] are all brought to life in this wildly
exuberant and wickedly humorous novel. . . . Alameddine manages to
describe the absurd reality of politics, society and religion that
his characters inhabit, with humor, yes, and even affection.”
—Alef Magazine
“Alameddine assumes the role of a hakawati . . . in a tour de force
that interweaves at least five separate narratives into an
exquisite tapestry in the denouement. He spins the story of Osama
al-Kharrat, a Lebanese American returning to Beirut to sit at his
dying father’s bedside; the al-Kharrat family’s rise to prominence
. . . the Mameluk warrior Baybars . . . the mythic Fatima, who
became the consort of the jinni Afrit-Jehanam; and, above all, the
disintegration of a tolerant, civilized Lebanon into a battleground
for competing religions, ethnicities, and ideologies. Each
narrative is further enhanced by smaller stories about raising
pigeons and playing traditional melodies as well as tales drawn
from the Koran, the Bible, The Arabian Nights, Ovid, Shakespeare,
and every person who ever spoke to the author. This magical novel
is epic in proportion and will enchant readers everywhere.
Recommended for all libraries.”
—Andrea Kempf, Library Journal (starred)
“Opulent and picaresque . . . In this grand saga of a Beirut family
with Armenian, English, and Druze roots, Alameddine constructs
stories within stories that encompass the world of the jinni, the
tales of Abraham and Hagar, the legendary pigeon wars of Urfa,
Lebanon’s brutal civil war, and post-9/11 Beirut and L.A. At the
center of this matrix is Osama al-Kharrat (his last name means
exaggerator), grandson of a hakawati and son of a wealthy car
dealer and a glamorous, sharp-tongued mother, one of many
resplendently witty and wily women characters. . . . [Osama’s]
arrival [in Beirut] sets off a cascade of memories and launches
1,001 stories. The most thrilling involve the legendary Fatima, the
hero Baybars, Osama’s bon vivant uncle Jihad, and the hakawati
himself, not to neglect the many diverting parables. Alameddine,
himself a brilliant hakawati, exuberantly reclaims and celebrates
the art of wisdom of the war-torn Middle East in this stupendous,
ameliorating, many-chambered palace of a novel.”
—Donna Seamans, Booklist (starred)
“Magical . . . Stories descend from stories as families descend
from families . . . telling tales of contemporary Lebanon that
converge, ingeniously, with timeless Arabic fables. With his father
dying in a Beirut hospital, Osama al-Kharrat, a Los Angeles
software engineer, returns in 2003 for the feast of Eid al-Hada. As
he keeps watch with his sister and extended family, Osama narrates
the family history, going back to his great-grandparents, and
including his grandfather, a hakawati, or storyteller. Their
stories are crosscut with two sinuous Arabian tales: one of Fatima,
a slave girl who torments hell and conquers the heart of Afreet
Jehanam, a genie; another of Baybars, the slave prince . . .
Osama’s family story generates a Proustian density of gossip: their
Beirut is luxuriant as only a hopelessly insular world on the cusp
of dissolution can be; its interruption by the savagery that takes
hold of the city in the ’70s is shocking. . . . Almost as alluring
is the subplot involving a contemporary Fatima as a femme fatale
whose charms stupefy and lure jewelry from a whole set of Saudi
moneymen, and her sexy sister Mariella, whose beauty queen career
(helped by the votes of judges cowed by her militia leader lovers)
is tragically, and luridly, aborted. Alameddine’s own storytelling
ingenuity seems infinite: out of it he has fashioned a novel on a
royal scale, as reflective of past empires as present.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred, boxed review)
“Here is absolute beauty. One of the finest novels I’ve read in
years. To explain why this book is so wonderful and why
Alameddine is so important would take a book. Fortunately you have
that very book in your hands.”
—Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar
Wao
“Alameddine mingles a four-generation family saga with a cornucopia
of Arabian tales and historical dramas to create a one-of-a-kind
novel. Osama al-Kharrat returns in 2003 to Beirut, where his family
once owned a prosperous car dealership, to visit his dying father
Farid. . . . Osama, who has lived most of his adult life in
California, speedily sinks back into the excitable embrace of his
extended family (including numerous strongminded women) as they
take turns at his father’s hospital bedside. The history of the
al-Kharrats and of Lebanon unfolds side by side with multiple
strands of Arabian folklore creatively reimagined by Alameddine,
who mischievously informs us at one point that his surname is a
variant of Aladdin. Not content to let a single jinni out of a
bottle, the author summons up a vast array of imps, demons,
witches, warriors, slave kings and fierce females to embed his
contemporary characters in the splendor of Middle Eastern culture .
. . No one interested in boundary-defying fiction will want to miss
Alameddine’s high-wire act. A dizzying, prodigal display of
storytelling overabundance.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“An epic in the oldest and newest senses, careening from the Koran
to the Old Testament, Homer to Scheherazade. It’s hard to imagine
the person who wouldn’t get carried away.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer
“Here 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 Confessions of Max
Tivoli
“The Hakawati is both genius and genie out of the ink bottle,
a glorious, gorgeous masterpiece of pure storytelling and fable
making. It promises to pay homage to the Great Story, to
recount the great tests of loyalty and love, and the proof shown by
the brave and the true. But Alameddine’s storyteller is
afflicted with tics and twitches, for the tests turn out to be
violent and insane, while the proof requires nepotism and bargain
prices. What’s more, the djinn are pouring tea for the
hakawati’s aunt, as missiles and wit illuminate the landscape
before searing it to bits. In spite of our horror, we’re
laughing uproariously, realizing that what is timeless about this
story makes it very timely indeed. If you read stories to be
entertained, read The Hakawati. If you enjoy stories of
true love, read The Hakawati. If you prefer family
sagas, read The Hakawati. If you like adventure tales,
read The Hakawati. If you read to stay informed,
read The Hakawati. If you read to escape, read The
Hakawati. If you read only literary classics, read The
Hakawati. If you love fables, watch the news first, then
read The Hakawati. Rabih Alameddine is the Hakawati, and in
the very near future, everyone will know how to pronounce his
name.”
—Amy Tan
“The Hakawati is astonishing: a triumph of storytelling.
Lesser writers might write a book based on only one of the dozens
of stories Alameddine delivers in just a few pages of this novel.
There is a delightful cheekiness in telling so many tales all at
the same time. It is a page-turner—not only because you want to
find out what happens at the end, but because of the ever-flowing
stories that take you forward. It is pure genius. I love this
novel.”
—Aleksandar Hemon, author of The Question of
Bruno andNowhere Man
“The Hakawati is not only a dazzlingly funny book, not only a
heart-breakingly beautiful book, it is a downright necessary book
in this deeply troubled new century. Rabih Alameddine has the
comprehensive soul of a great artist, and that he also holds within
him the more immediate souls of both Americans and Arabs makes his
words even more important for us to hear. This vast novel
roils with the complexity of history and myth and moment-to-moment
existence, and through Alameddine’s prodigious skills as a novelist
it does so with absolute clarity. This is a great and
enduring book.”
—Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from Strange
Mountain
“Wonderful. The Hakawati fed me, like a good nourishing
soup spooned into a hungry mouth: I was hungry for all of its rich,
delicious narratives. A terrific novel.”
—Dorothy Allison
Stories descend from stories as families descend from families in the magical third novel from Alameddine (I, the Divine), telling tales of contemporary Lebanon that converge, ingeniously, with timeless Arabic fables. With his father dying in a Beirut hospital, Osama al-Khattar, a Los Angeles software engineer, returns in 2003 for the feast of Eid al-Hada. As he keeps watch with his sister, Lina, and extended family, Osama narrates the family history, going back to his great-grandparents, and including his grandfather, a hakawati, or storyteller. Their stories are crosscut with two sinuous Arabian tales: one of Fatima, a slave girl who torments hell and conquers the heart of Afreet Jehanam, a genie; another of Baybars, the slave prince, and his clever servant, Othman. Osama's family story generates a Proustian density of gossip: their Beirut is luxuriant as only a hopelessly insular world on the cusp of dissolution can be; its interruption by the savagery that takes hold of the city in the '70s is shocking. The old, tolerant Beirut is symbolized by Uncle Jihad: a gay, intensely lively storyteller, sexually at odds with a society he loves. Uncle Jihad's death marks a symbolic break in the chain of stories and traditions-unless Osama assumes his place in the al-Khattar line. Almost as alluring is the subplot involving a contemporary Fatima as a femme fatale whose charms stupefy and lure jewelry from a whole set of Saudi moneymen, and her sexy sister Mariella, whose beauty queen career (helped by the votes of judges cowed by her militia leader lovers) is tragically, and luridly, aborted. Alameddine's own storytelling ingenuity seems infinite: out of it he has fashioned a novel on a royal scale, as reflective of past empires as present. (Apr.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
"Here is absolute beauty. One of the finest novels I've read in
years."
-Junot Diaz
"Stunning."
-The New York Times Book Review
"Sharp, seductive storytelling."
-O, The Oprah Magazine
"Delightful. . . . Alameddine juxtaposes truth and fiction,
contemporary lust and bawdy tales of the past, today's grief and
sorrow in the ancient world."
-The Washington Post Book World
"A wonderful book-poignant, profane.... This novel will keep you
transfixed."
-The Boston Globe
"Alameddine's intoxicating, ambitious, multi-layered new novel is a
marvel of storytelling bravado."
-The Seattle Times
"A fantastic tapestry . . . After reading [The Hakawati] I
didn't want to return to the mundane world. [Osama al-Kharrat]
returns to his native Beirut after long years spent in Los Angeles
to visit the bedside of his dying father. That's the brightest
thread of this tale. But this is the story of a thousand threads
interweaving legends, fables and parable. There are the mythic wars
of Arab lore, and the real civil war in Lebanon. . . . A story that
ranges from the seven gates of the underworld to a deathbed in
Beirut could only be told by a real storyteller, a hakawati-a
spellbinder. . . . We meet many, many other characters here:
Fatima, who appears to be a goddess, we meet Baybars, the slave
king, we meet imps, djinn, witches and horses with magical powers.
They're the atmosphere, and the real people feel like mortals
walking around in this fairytale atmosphere. . . . In this book,
people are often entering the world of legend when the real world
is painful. And that is, after all, one of the places that the
imagination springs from. In other words, when [Osama's] fictive
family is suffering the real pains of the Lebanese civil war, the
mother in this book will say, tell me a story, distract me, enchant
me, and the imagination serves that function too. . . . I really
liked that very gentle image, that Osama, even as his father is
breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out, is going
to begin a new tale."
-Jacki Lyden, senior correspondent, All Things
Considered
"Exhilarating . . . In Alameddine's world there are magic carpets,
but they can misbehave in midair. There are imps, but they can end
up in an imp stew or be transformed into colorful squawking
parrots. And there are Kama-Sutra topping tales of sex and
seduction. Alameddine has great fun telling this story, and it's
infectious. . . . Both dazzling and dizzying. [The Hakawati]
meanders, doubles back, moves back and forward in time, takes off
on tangents and then eats its own tail. There are stories within
stories within stories. . . . It's an audacious all-you-can-eat
buffet . . . Alameddine's talent is that each of these tales is as
picaresque as the next, each feels just as real, just as
contemporary. In some ways the stories leak into each other, full
of the same ingredients of love, family, betrayal and sex. . . .
Alameddine is a wonderful raconteur and teller of tales, as
effortless in conjuring up a war in ancient times as a garden party
in Los Angeles. He can be serious and poignant, [and he] also
refuses to be awed by the sweep of history-at one point producing a
prophet who announces he's not going to eat any more broccoli."
-Sandip Roy, San Jose Mercury News
"A riot of stories concerning the rise of the eccentric al-Kharrat
family. Osama [al-Kharrat]'s waggish grandfather was a hakawati, or
storyteller, and his classic tales of princes, genies, and
wise-cracking seductresses are worthy of Scheherazade. Rabih
Alameddine has a deft, winsome touch."
-Karen Karbo, Entertainment Weekly
"Bravely ambitious . . . This is the stuff of the day-to-day
becoming extraordinary, the work of the hakawati, the storyteller:
merging the mundane and the fabulous. The Hakawati is made
up of many stories, and like Scheherazade's famous nights, it is
intended to keep death at bay, while in serpentine fashion
resurrecting the world in words with each day's dawn. At the center
of the novel is the family saga of Osama al-Kharrat, who after 26
years in Los Angeles has returned to his roots in Lebanon to stand
vigil at his father's deathbed . . . Family tales are shared, and
passionate descriptions bring to full realization characters such
as Osama's sophisticated and headstrong mother or his humorous and
warmly affectionate Uncle Jihad. . . . A skillfully wrought,
emotional story . . . Alameddine should be commended for the
chances he takes, and [his] prodigious skills . . . He deserves
credit for telling a story the West should pay attention to, and
evoking the diversity of the Arab world (Christian, Muslim, Jew and
even Druze, they are all here) that is often taken for granted in
our ever narrowing perspective of righteousness."
-David Hellman, San Francisco Chronicle
"Captivating . . . A wildly imaginative patchwork of tales
improbably threading together Greek mythology, biblical parables,
Arab-Islamic lore, and even modern Lebanese politics [that] charm
and amuse. . . . Most of these tales originate with narrator
Osama's late paternal grandfather, whose fascinating childhood and
multiple identities forged a masterful hakawati, the Levantine
Arabic word for 'storyteller.' While Osama's rather stodgy father
had no time for the old man's colorful, moving and grotesque yarns,
Osama imbibed them with gusto. As a result, he has become a walking
treasure-trove of fables and historical legends. . . . Somewhere
between bitter reality and escapist fantasy, the ever-humorous
author provides the stoically optimistic view of the sputtering
Lebanese experiment: 'You take different groups, put them on top of
each other, simmer for a thousand years, keep adding more and more
strange tribes, simmer for another few thousand years, salt and
pepper with religion, and what you get is a delightful mess of a
stew that still tastes delectable and exotic, no matter how many
times you partake of it.'"
-Rayyan Al-Shawaf, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Alameddine is an embellisher extraordinaire. His new novel,The
Hakawati, is a big book, both literally (513 pages) and
figuratively, and it's attracting critical attention for its scope
and ingenuity. In the novel, scores of stories are woven through
the life of a Lebanese family, the al-Kharrats. It is told mostly
through the eyes of Osama, the young son. Osama is a good listener,
and everyone likes to tell him stories. Some of them are true-or
true enough. Some are folk tales. Some are about daily life in
Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. Some are about Baybars, a
13th-century warrior and sultan of Egypt and Syria. And some come
directly from Mr. Alameddine's Technicolor imagination."
-Cynthia Crossen, The Wall Street Journal
"Four stars. Astonishingly inventive . . . Stunningly retold
stories [that] reintroduce readers to familiar characters like
Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael and the fabled Fatima [and] also the
stories of contemporary Lebanese who have suffered the torments of
war for decades and how they carry on with their daily lives in
spite of all that insanity. . . . Alameddine's enchanting language
[has] a fascinating, lyrical quality . . . He juggles his many
narratives effortlessly, enhancing each with small details from the
world they inhabit-caring for pigeons on a rooftop, the way a cold
beer tastes after a desert trek. The real hakawati, here, is
Alameddine."
-Beth Dugan, Time Out Chicago
"Be thankful for Rabih Alameddine's new novel, The Hakawati.
In one of the most delightful books of the year, Alameddine relates
many of the stories that unite the people living in the Middle
East. The narrator's family are Druze living in Lebanon, but the
stories we hear come from Cairo, Damascus and Turkey as well as
from the Bible and the Quran. Modern readers have nothing to fear
from Alameddine as the novel is contemporary as well as ancient.
David Bowie and Santa Claus can be found in these stories as well
as Abraham, Orpheus, jinnis, sultans, crusaders, magic carpets,
virgins, houris and, of course, evil viziers. The story of why
Aladdin is Chinese is superb. The Hakawati is a book to be
read and read again."
-Chris Watson, Santa Cruz Sentinel
"Mesmerizing . . . Alameddine's book is sui generis . . . like a
magic carpet transporting you to a place where fables and history,
weddings and funerals, murder and sacrifice, people so real you can
almost touch them, and jinnis and witches and beys and imps and
prophets who take the form of parrots coexist . . . More than any
book in recent memory, The Hakawati, is-at its very big
heart-all about the importance of telling stories . . . Funny and
heartbreaking, with an ending that turns the novel on its head,
transforming the central character and giving new provenance to
every detail. . . . Pure genius."
-Elizabeth Dewberry, Paste Magazine
"If you like The Arabian Nights, check out The
Hakawati. . . . Fables, both old and new, reinterpreted by
Alameddine, weave throughout a modern-day story: Lebanese narrator
Osama al-Kharrat's arrival in Beirut from Los Angeles to visit his
ailing father, himself the son of a hakawati, or storyteller. In
the end, the tales create an intricate tapestry that displays the
complexities of a family and a culture."
-Don George, National Geographic Traveler
"In this entertaining, kaleidoscopic novel, a young
Lebanese-American returns to Beirut to visit his dying father.
Taking a cue from The Arabian Nights, Alameddine intertwines
this story with myriad others, drawing on the history and legends
of the Middle East, from Abraham and Fatima to the Crusades."
-Details
"Dazzling . . . weaves together spellbinding reimaginings of two of
the Arab world's most bewitching tales-that of Fatima and Baybars,
the famous slave king, and of Osama al-Kharrat, a Lebanese expat
who returns to Beirut to be at his dying father's bedside."
-Conde Nast Traveler
"A big, giant treat of a book . . . Rabih Alameddine shines as a
storyteller and a novelist, and nowhere are the distinctions
between the two vocations more evident than in this lovely,
captivating tome. As a storyteller, Alameddine dazzles us with
bejeweled adventure stories of lust and love, murder, scandal, and
war. As a novelist, he crafts a complex structure, shaping subtle
mirrors between the flights of fancy and the central story of a
family in war-torn Beirut, gently shifting the perspective until,
like a mosaic, the tiny pieces begin to take shape, and the real
picture of the novel emerges. Like a merry-making band of magic
carpets, the folk tales and adventure stories woven into the
central story of a Lebanese family whisk the reader away again and
again, acting as both mischievous troublemakers and sage guides.
Part of the great joy of reading The Hakawati is the
escapist pleasure found in these fanciful digressions . . .
Bewitched by Alameddine's fine prose and addictive tales . . . I
lost myself in tales of Fatima and her jinnis, sultans and their
great battles, Abraham, Sarah and Hagar reinvented and made real,
and watched as they sent echoes into the deeper, bleaker story of a
family and their own stories, ancient legacies and culture rent by
war. . . . My advice to potential readers is this: Surrender to the
hakawati. Get on this magic carpet, and let him tell you a story.
In fact, let him tell you one thousand stories. He'll handle all
the details, and you can sit back and enjoy the ride."
-Lucia Silva, Bookbrowse Recommends
"Not just a story within a story but hundreds of stories within a
story, a 513-page macrame with myriad threads."
-Anneli Rufus, East Bay Express
"Rabih Alameddine may be one of the most brilliant Middle Eastern
authors writing in English today. The Hakawatimasterfully
interweaves the contemporary story of Osama al-Kharrat, a
Maronite/Druze Lebanese who has settled in Los Angeles and returns
to his father's deathbed in Beirut, with re-imagined classic tales
of the Middle East [that] are all brought to life in this wildly
exuberant and wickedly humorous novel. . . . Alameddine manages to
describe the absurd reality of politics, society and religion that
his characters inhabit, with humor, yes, and even affection."
-Alef Magazine
"Alameddine assumes the role of a hakawati . . . in a tour de force
that interweaves at least five separate narratives into an
exquisite tapestry in the denouement. He spins the story of Osama
al-Kharrat, a Lebanese American returning to Beirut to sit at his
dying father's bedside; the al-Kharrat family's rise to prominence
. . . the Mameluk warrior Baybars . . . the mythic Fatima, who
became the consort of the jinni Afrit-Jehanam; and, above all, the
disintegration of a tolerant, civilized Lebanon into a battleground
for competing religions, ethnicities, and ideologies. Each
narrative is further enhanced by smaller stories about raising
pigeons and playing traditional melodies as well as tales drawn
from the Koran, the Bible, The Arabian Nights, Ovid, Shakespeare,
and every person who ever spoke to the author. This magical novel
is epic in proportion and will enchant readers everywhere.
Recommended for all libraries."
-Andrea Kempf, Library Journal (starred)
"Opulent and picaresque . . . In this grand saga of a Beirut family
with Armenian, English, and Druze roots, Alameddine constructs
stories within stories that encompass the world of the jinni, the
tales of Abraham and Hagar, the legendary pigeon wars of Urfa,
Lebanon's brutal civil war, and post-9/11 Beirut and L.A. At the
center of this matrix is Osama al-Kharrat (his last name means
exaggerator), grandson of a hakawati and son of a wealthy car
dealer and a glamorous, sharp-tongued mother, one of many
resplendently witty and wily women characters. . . . [Osama's]
arrival [in Beirut] sets off a cascade of memories and launches
1,001 stories. The most thrilling involve the legendary Fatima, the
hero Baybars, Osama's bon vivant uncle Jihad, and the hakawati
himself, not to neglect the many diverting parables. Alameddine,
himself a brilliant hakawati, exuberantly reclaims and celebrates
the art of wisdom of the war-torn Middle East in this stupendous,
ameliorating, many-chambered palace of a novel."
-Donna Seamans, Booklist (starred)
"Magical . . . Stories descend from stories as families descend
from families . . . telling tales of contemporary Lebanon that
converge, ingeniously, with timeless Arabic fables. With his father
dying in a Beirut hospital, Osama al-Kharrat, a Los Angeles
software engineer, returns in 2003 for the feast of Eid al-Hada. As
he keeps watch with his sister and extended family, Osama narrates
the family history, going back to his great-grandparents, and
including his grandfather, a hakawati, or storyteller. Their
stories are crosscut with two sinuous Arabian tales: one of Fatima,
a slave girl who torments hell and conquers the heart of Afreet
Jehanam, a genie; another of Baybars, the slave prince . . .
Osama's family story generates a Proustian density of gossip: their
Beirut is luxuriant as only a hopelessly insular world on the cusp
of dissolution can be; its interruption by the savagery that takes
hold of the city in the '70s is shocking. . . . Almost as alluring
is the subplot involving a contemporary Fatima as a femme fatale
whose charms stupefy and lure jewelry from a whole set of Saudi
moneymen, and her sexy sister Mariella, whose beauty queen career
(helped by the votes of judges cowed by her militia leader lovers)
is tragically, and luridly, aborted. Alameddine's own storytelling
ingenuity seems infinite: out of it he has fashioned a novel on a
royal scale, as reflective of past empires as present."
-Publishers Weekly (starred, boxed review)
"Here is absolute beauty. One of the finest novels I've read in
years. To explain why this book is so wonderful and why Alameddine
is so important would take a book. Fortunately you have that very
book in your hands."
-Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar
Wao
"Alameddine mingles a four-generation family saga with a cornucopia
of Arabian tales and historical dramas to create a one-of-a-kind
novel. Osama al-Kharrat returns in 2003 to Beirut, where his family
once owned a prosperous car dealership, to visit his dying father
Farid. . . . Osama, who has lived most of his adult life in
California, speedily sinks back into the excitable embrace of his
extended family (including numerous strongminded women) as they
take turns at his father's hospital bedside. The history of the
al-Kharrats and of Lebanon unfolds side by side with multiple
strands of Arabian folklore creatively reimagined by Alameddine,
who mischievously informs us at one point that his surname is a
variant of Aladdin. Not content to let a single jinni out of a
bottle, the author summons up a vast array of imps, demons,
witches, warriors, slave kings and fierce females to embed his
contemporary characters in the splendor of Middle Eastern culture .
. . No one interested in boundary-defying fiction will want to miss
Alameddine's high-wire act. A dizzying, prodigal display of
storytelling overabundance."
-Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"An epic in the oldest and newest senses, careening from the Koran
to the Old Testament, Homer to Scheherazade. It's hard to imagine
the person who wouldn't get carried away."
-Jonathan Safran Foer
"Here 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 Confessions of Max
Tivoli
"The Hakawati is both genius and genie out of the ink
bottle, a glorious, gorgeous masterpiece of pure storytelling and
fable making. It promises to pay homage to the Great Story, to
recount the great tests of loyalty and love, and the proof shown by
the brave and the true. But Alameddine's storyteller is afflicted
with tics and twitches, for the tests turn out to be violent and
insane, while the proof requires nepotism and bargain prices.
What's more, the djinn are pouring tea for the hakawati's aunt, as
missiles and wit illuminate the landscape before searing it to
bits. In spite of our horror, we're laughing uproariously,
realizing that what is timeless about this story makes it very
timely indeed. If you read stories to be entertained, read The
Hakawati. If you enjoy stories of true love, read The
Hakawati. If you prefer family sagas, read The Hakawati.
If you like adventure tales, read The Hakawati. If you read
to stay informed, read The Hakawati. If you read to escape,
read The Hakawati. If you read only literary classics, read
The Hakawati. If you love fables, watch the news first, then
read The Hakawati. Rabih Alameddine is the Hakawati, and in
the very near future, everyone will know how to pronounce his
name."
-Amy Tan
"The Hakawati is astonishing: a triumph of storytelling.
Lesser writers might write a book based on only one of the dozens
of stories Alameddine delivers in just a few pages of this novel.
There is a delightful cheekiness in telling so many tales all at
the same time. It is a page-turner-not only because you want to
find out what happens at the end, but because of the ever-flowing
stories that take you forward. It is pure genius. I love this
novel."
-Aleksandar Hemon, author of The Question of Bruno
andNowhere Man
"The Hakawati is not only a dazzlingly funny book, not only
a heart-breakingly beautiful book, it is a downright necessary book
in this deeply troubled new century. Rabih Alameddine has the
comprehensive soul of a great artist, and that he also holds within
him the more immediate souls of both Americans and Arabs makes his
words even more important for us to hear. This vast novel roils
with the complexity of history and myth and moment-to-moment
existence, and through Alameddine's prodigious skills as a novelist
it does so with absolute clarity. This is a great and enduring
book."
-Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from Strange
Mountain
"Wonderful. The Hakawati fed me, like a good nourishing soup
spooned into a hungry mouth: I was hungry for all of its rich,
delicious narratives. A terrific novel."
-Dorothy Allison
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