The Hakawati Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Hakawatis and A Thousand and One Nights and our BookBrowse Review of The Hakawati.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

About This Guide

The introduction, questions, and suggestions for further reading that follow are intended to enhance your group's conversation about The Hakawati, 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.


About This Book

In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father's deathbed. The city is a shell of the Beirut Osama remembers, but he and his friends and family take solace in the things that have always sustained them: gossip, laughter, and, above all, stories.

Osama's grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching stories—of his arrival in Lebanon, an orphan of the Turkish wars, and of how he earned the name al-Kharrat, the fibster—are interwoven with classic tales of the Middle East, stunningly reimagined.


Reader's Guide

1. The novel opens with the tale of an emir and his wife who have twelve daughters and seek the aid of their slave, Fatima the Egyptian, to help them have a son. This family tale runs parallel, for much of the book, to the story of Osama and his family. What links, if any, do you see between these major plotlines?
2. When Osama returns to his ruined former home in Beirut, he hasn't lived there for twenty-six years. He feels out of place and alienated. How has the war changed life for his family? Do any of the ensuing events, the family and friends he sees, or the memories called up by his visit, help to create a renewed sense of belonging for him, or does his sense of alienation continue throughout?
3. Fatima tells Khayal that his desire for Jawad can only be fulfilled if his stories are seductive enough: "Please . . . favor us with your seduction. We sit here, parched earth awaiting its promised thunderstorm. Quench our thirst, we beg you" [p. 21]. What are some other instances of how stories are shown to be both seductive and life-giving?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Anchor Books. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.