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Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels An Unnecessary Woman; I, the Divine; Koolaids; The Hakawati; The Wrong End of the Telescope; and the story collection, The Perv. In 2019, he won the Dos Passos Prize.
Rabih Alameddine's website
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Okay, let's begin at the beginning. Do you remember when the idea for
The Hakawati came to you? In your mind's eye, what did you see?
Along time ago, in a galaxy far, far away—oh, never mind.
The idea for The Hakawati had many beginnings, as is the case for many a
novel, I presume. Which beginning would one consider to be the true one, the
original?
Let's see, in 1999 I wrote a long piece that was later trimmed and published as
a short story in Zoetrope. That was chapter 10 from the novel—which goes back
and forth between my main character Osama al-Kharrat's visit to the UCLA campus
as a teenager and his vigil at his father's hospital bed years later—in a
different form. I wrote a couple more stories, one successful, the other not.
The latter ended up as a part of the book. I had begun to see the al-Kharrat
family in my head. It still wasn't a novel. I was floundering. I had different
novels in my head and none of them seemed to make much sense.
I was teaching in Beirut 2003—annus horribilis, as the Queen would say—when my
father was dying in the hospital. I couldn't follow through on any of the novels
I had in my head, so I began to write something completely ...
Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels An Unnecessary Woman; I, the Divine; Koolaids; The Hakawati; The Wrong End of the Telescope; and the story collection, The Perv. In 2019, he won the Dos Passos Prize. (more)
If you enjoyed:
An Unnecessary Woman
Try:
The Wrong End of the Telescope
by Rabih Alameddine
Anita Amirrezvani was born in Tehran, Iran, and raised in San Francisco. For ten years, she was a dance critic for newspapers in the Bay Area. She has received fellowships from the National Arts Journalism Program, the NEA's ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Hakawati
Try:
The Blood of Flowers
by Anita Amirrezvani
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