{"product_id":"the-hakawati","title":"The Hakawati","description":"\u003cp\u003eHere 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44962892709941,"sku":"ByrdShop_0307266796","price":25.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780307266798.jpg?v=1770399951","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-hakawati","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}