The Hakawati

About this book

Here is absolute beauty. One of the finest novels Ive read in years. Junot Diaz 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. In 2003 Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his fathers 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. Osamas grandfather was a hakawati or storyteller and his bewitching storiesof his arrival in Lebanon an orphan of the Turkish wars and of how he earned the name al-Kharrat the fibsterare interwoven with classic tales of the Middle East stunningly reimagined. Here are Abraham and Isaac; Ishmael father of the Arab tribes; the ancient fabled Fatima; and Baybars the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders. Here too are contemporary Lebanese whose stories tell a larger heartbreaking tale of seemingly endless warand of survival. Like a true hakawati Rabih Alameddine has given us an Arabian Nights for this centurya funny captivating novel that enchants and dazzles from its very first lines: Listen. Let me take you on a journey beyond imagining. Let me tell you a story.