Rabih Alameddine

"Aaliya Sohbi lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's 'unnecessary appendage.' Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The thirty-seven books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read-- by anyone. After overhearing her neighbors, 'the three witches, ' discussing her too-white hair, Aaliya...

The Angel of History follows Yemeni-born poet Jacob as he revisits the events of his life, from his maternal upbringing in an Egyptian whorehouse to his adolescence under the aegis of his wealthy father and his life as a gay Arab man in San Francisco at the height of AIDS. Hovered over by the presence of alluring, sassy Satan who taunts Jacob to remember his painful past and dour, frigid Death who urges him to forget and give up on life, Jacob is...

When National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle finalist Rabih Alameddine's dazzling literary debut Koolaids first published it garnered exuberant praise from Amy Tan, Rick Wallach, and Sarah Schulman, among others. Detailing the impact of the AIDS epidemic and the Lebanese civil war in Beirut on a circle of friends and family during the eighties and nineties, Koolaids mines the chaos of contemporary experience, telling the stories of characters...

One of the Middle East's most celebrated writers, Rabih Alameddine, discusses his novel An Unnecessary Woman, an intimate and moving portrait of a reclusive book-loving 72-year-old Lebanese woman who views her complicated past through the lens of her favorite works of literature. In conversation with Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge). Mia Dillon will read an excerpt.

t litnsab min bayn ydayha kllma addet al'iihkam ealayha, ftqf eajztan 'amam aistihqaq kitabat mdhkkratha. hi ealiqat dwmana fi alfasl alawwl min riwayatiha, tuhawil lamlamat shadharat hyat baetharatiha alahdath: harb lubnan fi 'akthar zawayaha qitamata. masat altshrdhm aleayly bayn wald aistabdal zawjatih alamyrkyt bi'ukhraa tqlydyt, wwaldt eanat mararat altalaq htta 'aqdamat ealaa al'iinthar. almanfaa aldhy faradath ealaa nafsiha fi 'amirka. ealaqat...

Offers a selection of literary essays from the previous year which were originally published in American periodicals.

"A groundbreaking survey of the language used around queerness in the Arab world, with contributions by leading Arab queer writers, thinkers and activists, The Queer Arab Glossary is a first-of-its-kind survey of the linguistic landscape surrounding queerness in the Arab world. It brings together more than 300 words and terms used to refer to queer people across the spoken Arabic dialects, ranging from the humorous to the harrowing, serious to tongue-in-cheek,...