Rabih Alameddine Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

A wide ranging conversation with Rabih Alameddine, in which he discusses his first novel The Hakawati and what he hopes it will teach readers about Middle-Eastern culture, his views on modern-day Lebanon, where he found inspiration for the book, and whether it is based on a particular hakawati (story-teller).

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 ...