false 132761 2774912 0385664761 9780385664769 135 <![CDATA[The Hakawati]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2774912.The_Hakawati 4.03 429
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. 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 war - and of survival.]]> 132761 4.03 687 194 2008 407942 0393323560 9780393323566 22 <![CDATA[I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174500059m/407942.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174500059s/407942.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/407942.I_the_Divine_A_Novel_in_First_Chapters 4.07 114 Los Angeles Times).

"[W]ith each new approach, [Sarah] sheds another layer of her pretension, revealing another truth about her humanity" (San Francisco Weekly). Raised in a hybrid family shaped by divorce and remarriage, and by Beirut in wartime, Sarah finds a fragile peace in self-imposed exile in the United States. Her extraordinary dignity is supported by a best friend, a grown-up son, occasional sensual pleasures, and her determination to tell her own story. "Like her narrative, [Sarah's] life is broken and fragmented. [But] the bright, strange, often startling pieces...are moving and memorable" (Boston Globe). Reading group guide included.

]]> 132761 4.03 687 194 1985 1055996 0312186932 9780312186937 10 <![CDATA[Koolaids: The Art of War]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1180565824m/1055996.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1180565824s/1055996.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1055996.Koolaids_The_Art_of_War 4.10 48 Koolaids turns the traditional novel inside out and hangs it on the clothesline to air.
]]> 132761 4.03 687 194 1998 410434 0312200412 9780312200411 1 <![CDATA[The Perv: Stories]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174510057m/410434.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174510057s/410434.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/410434.The_Perv_Stories 3.67 6 A provocative first collection of stories by the author of Koolaids

Following the publication of his critically acclaimed first novel, Koolaids, Rabih Alameddine offers a collection of stories that explores the experience of a number of Lebanese characters - men and women, gay and straight--whose lives have been blown apart by a disastrous civil war and the resulting international diaspora. Daring in style as well as content, these tales explore the relationships that anchor our hearts to the world -- father and son, grandson and grandmother, pedophile and 12-year-old boy, young man and woman of the streets, sister and sister, daughter and father, gay man and heterosexual, the quick and their dead.

Suffused by a yearning for what has been lost, these narratives are both experimental and traditional, humorous and disturbing, and confirm without doubt that Alemeddine is one of the most original and accomplished young writers to emerge in some time.
</div>]]> 132761 4.03 687 194 1999 6963436 0330454471 9780330454476 1 <![CDATA[The Storyteller]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6963436-the-storyteller 3.50 2 132761 4.03 687 194 2009