Bøker av Rabih Alameddine

An astonishingly inventive, wonderfully exuberant novel that takes us from the shimmering dunes of ancient Egypt to the war-torn streets of twenty-first-century Lebanon.

Osamas bestefar var en hakawati, en historieforteller, og han var en av de beste. Osama har vendt tilbake til Beirut fra USA fordi faren ligger for døden. Når familien samles rundt sykesengen gjenoppdager de fortellingene.

FRA FORFATTEREN AV DEN INTERNASJONALE BESTSELGEREN HAKAWATI "Rabih Alameddine er en makeløs historieforteller." The Wall Street Journal "Rabih er en forfatter med en global bevissthet. I hans historier finner du utfordrende ideer i oppbrutte fortellinger, storslagne bilder, dristig språk - kort sagt, stor fortellerkunst." Amy Tan Hvordan lyder den gamle klisjeen? Da alle arabiske jenter sto i kø og ventet på at Gud skulle dele ut genet som gjør alle desperate etter å gifte seg, må jeg ha vært et annet sted, trolig oppslukt av en bok. I en gammel leilighet i Beirut bor 72 år gamle Aaliya. Hun har blått hår og en bemerkelsesverdig historie å fortelle. Mens bombene falt i bygatene har Aaliya dyrket sin store lidenskap: bøker. Sine beste år har hun viet til å lese litteratur og oversette den. Hun har et mislykket ekteskap bak seg, og få venner, men har en særegen sans for humor og en rifle som trofast ledsager. Med stor innlevelse og sjarm tar Aaliya oss med på en reise gjennom livet sitt, belyst gjennom bøkene som har gjort sterkest inntrykk på henne, og forfattere som Bolaño, Sebald, García Márquez, Calvino, Nabokov og Dickens. Aaliyas historie er både en personlig fortelling, en familiehistorie og et innblikk i Beiruts og Libanons historie. Samtidig gir romanen er gripende bilde av hvordan det er å falle utenfor et samfunn som er sterkt basert på tradisjonelle verdier. Rabih Alameddine forteller mesterlige historier Vesten har grunn til å lytte til. Han ble født i Jordan av libanesiske foreldre, og vokste opp i Kuwait og Libanon, og har utdannelse fra England og USA. Alameddine har gitt ut fire romaner og en novellesamling. Han har hatt stor internasjonal suksess med romanen Hakawati, som ble utgitt på norsk i 2010 og herjet bestselgerlistene da den utkom i pocket.Les mer om boken her.

A memorable and deeply moving portrait of a woman, a family and a culture told entirely in first chapters, this will appeal to fans of Amy Tan and Jung Chang.

'A profoundly beautiful novel that infolds the political with the personal in unexpected and new ways . . . An extraordinary book' Neel Mukherjee, New Statesman, 'Books of the Year 2016''His stories take the reader into the labyrinth that is the mind . . . The Angel of History is digressive and daring' the Economist'Alameddine has created a scintillating, original work whose moral complexity and detail of observation are wholly contemporary and entirely his own' SpectatorSet over the course of one night in the waiting room of a psych clinic, The Angel of History follows Yemeni-born poet Jacob as he revisits the events of his life, from his maternal upbringing in an Egyptian whorehouse to his adolescence under the aegis of his wealthy father and his life as a gay Arab man in San Francisco at the height of AIDS. Hovered over by the presence of alluring, sassy Satan who taunts Jacob to remember his painful past and dour, frigid Death who urges him to forget and give up on life, Jacob is also attended to by 14 saints. Set in Cairo and Beirut; Sana'a, Stockholm, and San Francisco; Alameddine gives us a charged philosophical portrait of a brilliant mind in crisis. This is a profound, philosophical and hilariously winning story of the war between memory and oblivion we wrestle with every day of our lives.'Here is a book, full of story, unrepentantly political at every level. At a time when many western writers seem to be in retreat from saying anything that could be construed as political, Alameddine says it all, shamelessly, gloriously and, realised like his Satan, in the most stylish of forms' the Guardian

Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family s 'unnecessary appendage'. Every year, she translates a new favourite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The thirty-seven books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read - by anyone.This breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman follows Aaliya s digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut. Colourful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and Aaliya s own volatile past. As she tries to overcome her ageing body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left.A love letter to literature and its power to define who we are, the prodigiously gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a magnificent rendering of one woman's life in the Middle East.

Named after the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt, red-haired Sarah Nour El-Din is "wonderful, irresistibly unique, funny, and amazing," raves Amy Tan. Determined to make of her life a work of art, she tries to tell her story, sometimes casting it as a memoir, sometimes a novel, always fascinatingly incomplete.

* A dazzling literary debut, set in the war in Lebanon and the AIDS epidemic