Grove Press
Grove Press
Grove Press
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“Alameddine is a writer with a boundless imagination.”—NPR
From National Book Award finalist and winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction comes a tragicomic love story set in Lebanon, a modern saga of family, memory, and the unbreakable 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 desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail 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 longing 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 forget.
Told in Raja’s irresistible and wickedly funny voice, the novel 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, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) is a wildly unique and sparkling celebration of love.
“Spectacular . . . Alameddine’s irreverent prose evokes the old master storytellers from my own Middle Eastern home, their observations toothy and full of wit, returning always to human absurdity.” —New York Times Book Review
“Provocative . . . Alameddine makes an argument for writing even when writing fails. Especially when writing fails. What else is there?” —San Francisco Chronicle
“His books offer a compelling, often jarring, blend of cynicism and hope. They urge readers to contemplate the humanity and suffering of others rather than turn their faces away.”—The Economist
“[A] beautiful novel . . . A quiet, character-driven book about cultural identity, what it means to offer help, and a whole lot more. It’s especially refreshing to read a book like this — full of queer characters but not centered on specific queer experiences.”—BookRiot
“A prismatic, sui generis story that’s unafraid of humor while addressing a humanitarian crisis, threading a needle between that urge to witness and the recognition that doing so may be pointless.”—Mark Athitakis, Los Angeles Times
“[The Wrong End of the Telescope] defies expectations, managing the rare feat of approaching the experience of refugees with tenderness, whimsy, and humor… The writing is full of silly jokes, flights of fancy, and memorable images . . . Alameddine dares to show Syrian refugees who are cranky, happy, resigned, dishonest, in love . . . What these stories add up to is a portrayal of the refugee experience, in all its vulnerability and variety, its painful in-betweenness. It is an experience that is more universal than those of us who observe refugees from the supposed safety of our fixed selves, fascinated or repelled or commiserating, might imagine; and that can be honored simply by being told.” —New York Review of Books
“With enormous generosity and knowing humor . . . The Wrong End of the Telescope is an unequivocal masterpiece.” —Dave Wheeler, Shelf Awareness
“A shape-shifting kaleidoscope, a collection of moments—funny, devastating, absurd—that bear witness to the violence of war and displacement without sensationalizing it . . . The Wrong End of the Telescope is a gorgeously written, darkly funny and refreshingly queer witness to that seeking.” —BookPage
“The great strength of this latest novel from National Book Award finalist Alameddine (An Unnecessary Woman) lies in how it deftly combines the biographical with the historical; the small, more personal moments often carry the most weight. A remarkable, surprisingly intimate tale of human connection in the midst of disaster.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“No one writes fiction that is more naturally an extension of lived life than this master storyteller . . . Engaging and unsettling in equal measure.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Profound and wonderful . . . A wise, deeply moving story that can still locate humor in the pit of hell . . . A triumph.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The Wrong End of the Telescope is the best kind of prose. Lines break out like poetry and the story muscles on, telling. The setting is real history which I’m hungry for and Rabih Alameddine queers it handsomely with all kinds of love and a feeling that existence is pure experience, not language at all and the shape of this book, right up to the end, is a becoming.” —Eileen Myles
“Rabih Alameddine is a master of both the intimate and the global — and The Wrong End of the Telescope finds him at the top of his craft. A story of rescue, identity, deracination, and connection, this novel is timely and urgent and a lot of fun.” —Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers
“The incomparable Rabih Alameddine’s latest novel shows sly wit, poetic turns of phrase, and the slow-burning outrage at the ongoing Mediterranean refugee crisis—but I particularly love his understated handling of Mina, the novel’s transgender narrator. Her identity is not a battlefield for the culture wars, just a refreshingly unproblematic perspective from which a story unfolds.” —Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution
Praise for The Angel of History
“Rabih Alameddine is one of our most daring writers—daring not in the cheap sense of lurid or racy, but as a surgeon, a philosopher, an explorer, or a dancer.”—Michael Chabon
“A remarkable novel, a commentary of love and death, creativity and spirituality, memory and survival . . . brilliant . . . [it] hits an emotional nerve.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Alameddine, entrancing and unflinching, is in easy command of his bricolage narrative, and he leavens its tragedy with wit.”—New York Times Book Review
“A sprawling fever dream of a novel, by turns beautiful and horrifying, and impossible to forget. Alameddine is a writer with a boundless imagination . . . [his] writing is so beautiful, so exuberant.”—NPR
“A meditation on, among other things, aging, politics, literature, loneliness, grief and resilience. If there are flaws to this beautiful and absorbing novel, they are not readily apparent.”—New York Times
“Irresistible . . . [the author] offers winningly unrestricted access to the thoughts of his affectionate, urbane, vulnerable and fractiously opinionated heroine. Mr. Alameddine’s portrayal of a life devoted to the intellect is so candid and human that, for a time, readers can forget that any such barrier exists.”—Wall Street Journal
“Alameddine has conjured a beguiling narrator in his engaging novel, a woman who is, like her city, hard to read, hard to take, hard to know and, ultimately, passionately complex.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A restlessly intelligent novel built around an unforgettable character . . . A novel full of elegant, poetic sentences.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
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