Rabih Alameddine is the author of
Comforting Myths: Concerning the Political in Art,
and the novels An Unnecessary Woman;
I, the Divine; Koolaids; The Hakawati;
and the story collection, The Perv.
In 2019, he won the Dos Passos Prize.
Comforting Myths:
Concerning the Political in Art
INDIEBOUND | BARNES & NOBLE | AMAZON
A timely and urgent inquiry by one of global literature's leading lights
In this concisely argued and illuminating book, the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author Rabih Alameddine takes the subject of politics and art head-on, questioning the very premise of dividing these two pillars of culture into an either/or proposition.
Alameddine’s lucid analysis cuts to the heart of contemporary discussions about the intersections of politics, identity, and fiction. This is essential reading.
- Publishers Weekly
This slim volume consists of two essays that he delivered as lectures, the second of which was published in Harper’s Magazine in 2018. In both, he plays the role of political gadfly....Alameddine might not always be convincing, but he is consistently entertaining. A provocative pair of essays.
- Kirkus Reviews
The Wrong End of the Telescope
By National Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award finalist for An Unnecessary Woman, Rabih Alameddine, comes a transporting new novel about an Arab American trans woman’s journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos island.
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“Profound and wonderful… A wise, deeply moving story that can still locate humor in the pit of hell… A triumph.”—Publishers Weekly (starred)
“Mina is a riveting narrator, struggling to find her footing even when the weight of her identity is crushing… A kaleidoscopic view of the many facets of the refugee crisis.”—Booklist
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The incendiary novel by National Book Award finalist Rabih Alameddine, about an Arab American poet, whose adult life in San Francisco spans the AIDS decades, and his hilarious and heartbreaking struggle to remember and forget the events of an astonishing life.
From the author of the international bestseller The Hakawati comes an enchanting story of a book-loving, obsessive, seventy-two-year-old “unnecessary” woman with a past shaped by the Lebanese Civil War.