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. He reveals how a political dimension enlarges a work of art rather than making it less beautiful or reducing it to a polemic, as we are so often and carelessly taught. But he also ponders what makes art political to begin with: how essential is the artist’s conscious political intent, and what does the reader or viewer contribute to the work’s political capability or significance? In exploring these questions, Alameddine engages intensely with his role as an immigrant and a gay author writing inside a globally dominant, often oblivious culture, and invokes the work of numerous writers, from Tayeb Salih and Aleksandar Hemon to Teju Cole and Salman Rushdie, who also struggle to be heard as something more than an “other.” The book features throughout Alameddine’s brilliantly relatable voice—shrewd, humorous, challenging, and as honest about his own limitations as he is about his passions.

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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

Biting, unflinchingly honest and funny, Alameddine leads the sacred cows of the contemporary Western literary canon to the slaughter. From the inextricability of art from politics, to the selective deafness of the publishing world which tunes out uncomfortable truths, to the absurdity of ‘world literature’ and who gets to tell stories and on behalf of whom, he skewers, with precision and wit, current orthodoxies of the liberal literary establishment.

- Aminatta Forna, author of The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion

A provocative treatise by one of our most important literary writers on the role of politics in literature. Like all of his work, it is both wise and funny.

- Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

Not everyone was born to rant, but Rabih Alameddine was, and I am so here for all and any of his rants, tirades, and manifestos, most especially this furiously excellent one that puts 'apolitical' in its place, which is to say in the trash. That is, Rabih reminds us everything is political, and apolitical is a fiction that makes the most comfortable beneficiaries of the status quo just a smidgen more comfortable.

- Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me