The True True Story
of Raja the Gullible
(and His Mother)
“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.
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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
Comforting Myths:
Concerning the Political in Art
A timely and urgent inquiry
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.
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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
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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
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| INDIEBOUND |
| BARNES & NOBLE |
| AMAZON |
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
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.