What do you think?
Rate this book
The Perv: Stories
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.
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.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published July 2, 1999
266 people want to read
About the author
Rabih Alameddine
26 books977 followersRabih Alameddine (Arabic: ربيع علم الدين; born 1959) is an American painter and writer. His 2021 novel The Wrong End of the Telescope won the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Alameddine was born in Amman, Jordan to Lebanese Druze parents. He grew up in Kuwait and Lebanon, which he left at age 17 to live first in England and then in California to pursue higher education. He earned a degree in engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Master of Business in San Francisco.
Alameddine began his career as an engineer, then moved to writing and painting. His debut novel Koolaids, which touched on both the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco and the Lebanese Civil War, was published in 1998 by Picador.
The author of six novels and a collection of short stories, Alameddine was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. His queer sensibility has added a different slant to narratives about immigrants within the context of what became known as Orientalism.
In 2014, Alameddine was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and he won the California Book Awards Gold Medal Fiction for An Unnecessary Woman.
Alameddine is best known for this novel, which tells the story of Aaliya, a Lebanese woman and translator living in war-torn Lebanon. The novel "manifests traumatic signposts of the [Lebanese] civil war, which make it indelibly situational, and accordingly latches onto complex psychological issues."
In 2017, Alameddine won the Arab American Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction for The Angel of History.
In 2018 he was teaching in the University of Virginia's creative writing program, in Charlottesville.
He was shortlisted for the 2021 Sunday Times Short Story Award for his story, "The July War".
His novel The Wrong End of the Telescope won the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Alameddine was born in Amman, Jordan to Lebanese Druze parents. He grew up in Kuwait and Lebanon, which he left at age 17 to live first in England and then in California to pursue higher education. He earned a degree in engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Master of Business in San Francisco.
Alameddine began his career as an engineer, then moved to writing and painting. His debut novel Koolaids, which touched on both the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco and the Lebanese Civil War, was published in 1998 by Picador.
The author of six novels and a collection of short stories, Alameddine was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. His queer sensibility has added a different slant to narratives about immigrants within the context of what became known as Orientalism.
In 2014, Alameddine was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and he won the California Book Awards Gold Medal Fiction for An Unnecessary Woman.
Alameddine is best known for this novel, which tells the story of Aaliya, a Lebanese woman and translator living in war-torn Lebanon. The novel "manifests traumatic signposts of the [Lebanese] civil war, which make it indelibly situational, and accordingly latches onto complex psychological issues."
In 2017, Alameddine won the Arab American Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction for The Angel of History.
In 2018 he was teaching in the University of Virginia's creative writing program, in Charlottesville.
He was shortlisted for the 2021 Sunday Times Short Story Award for his story, "The July War".
His novel The Wrong End of the Telescope won the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 12, 2007
I am like totally obsessed with this author. It's his tone, his use of language and sharply drawn characters. I like the idea of short fiction because it's easier for me to enjoy his work in small bites. It's rich and delicious like dark chocolate.
March 17, 2025
Absolutely dazzling, one of my great reading experiences of 2024, and one of my favorite book purchases of this year (more of which later). I have wanted to read this collection ever since encountering the list of novels mentioned in 'The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered' edited by Tom Cardamone and it was worth the wait. Do not allow yourself to be put off with the idea that this collection is limited by time, place or nationality. Although AIDS is inescapable it is not a collection of stories about AIDS, or gays or Lebenon or Lebanese people. Of course all those things are there but like all the greatest writers Alameddine takes the particular and makes it universal. I can't help insisting on this because to suggest that these stories have a limited audience is to say the same about Chekov, Maupassant, O Henry, O'Faolain or countless other short story writers I love.
Rabih Alameddine's stories are about life, love and everything. I will talk about the title story Perv later but first I must praise 'The Changing Room' which concludes with one of the most beautiful comeuppence moments in literature and a defy anyone not to want to cheer at it. As for the concluding story 'Remembering Nasser' it is one of the most moving stories about the complexities of family and love that I have read. But then the same could be said of 'My Grandmother the Grandmaster'. The problem is that I can't say any more because I will inevitably give away details that might take away some of the pleasure and joy of reading these stories for the first time. I am not talking about spoilers or anything crass like that. But as these stories have never been republished and copies can be quite expensive second hand (I managed to buy a copy for c. £50 including postage to the UK which was half the cost of every other copy I ever saw so don't despair, if you wait and search diligently it is amazing what you will find).
I have to say something about the title story 'Perv', it is about a pedophile but not in the way that could offend or shock you. It is also a wonderful tale of, well again I might stray into specifics which would only ruin it. Alameddine is too good a writer to need excuses or justification. These are stories that thirty odd years from publication stand as some of the finest writing from the end of the 20th century. It is real gem of a collection and should be better known and more widely read.
Rabih Alameddine's stories are about life, love and everything. I will talk about the title story Perv later but first I must praise 'The Changing Room' which concludes with one of the most beautiful comeuppence moments in literature and a defy anyone not to want to cheer at it. As for the concluding story 'Remembering Nasser' it is one of the most moving stories about the complexities of family and love that I have read. But then the same could be said of 'My Grandmother the Grandmaster'. The problem is that I can't say any more because I will inevitably give away details that might take away some of the pleasure and joy of reading these stories for the first time. I am not talking about spoilers or anything crass like that. But as these stories have never been republished and copies can be quite expensive second hand (I managed to buy a copy for c. £50 including postage to the UK which was half the cost of every other copy I ever saw so don't despair, if you wait and search diligently it is amazing what you will find).
I have to say something about the title story 'Perv', it is about a pedophile but not in the way that could offend or shock you. It is also a wonderful tale of, well again I might stray into specifics which would only ruin it. Alameddine is too good a writer to need excuses or justification. These are stories that thirty odd years from publication stand as some of the finest writing from the end of the 20th century. It is real gem of a collection and should be better known and more widely read.
January 11, 2015
Excellent collection by a Lebanese-American writer. “The Perv” is especially fine. The reader sees the narrow, personal world that at once becomes universal because of its specificity.
May 16, 2022
This collection of short stories by Lebanese author Rabih Alameddine details the lives and experiences of eight very different main characters, most of them queer, all of them Lebanese, and thus sharing a similar cultural background and a lot of similar experiences.
I liked this collection a lot because it was written in a very relatable and accessible manner, and for me there was not a single bad story in this.
I particularly enjoyed the LGBT representation, which was an interesting and a rather unusual mix, I'd say, with a lot of parallels but also some marked differences between the different MCs in the different stories, which I found alluring to read about. Also, I really liked the narrative structures and the plot development in these little vignettes. I highly recommend this one.
I liked this collection a lot because it was written in a very relatable and accessible manner, and for me there was not a single bad story in this.
I particularly enjoyed the LGBT representation, which was an interesting and a rather unusual mix, I'd say, with a lot of parallels but also some marked differences between the different MCs in the different stories, which I found alluring to read about. Also, I really liked the narrative structures and the plot development in these little vignettes. I highly recommend this one.
April 10, 2019
Let's be honest - The Perv is the money here, the other stories are too similar and mainly seem to be included to boost the page count (although The Changing Room was my favorite story by far).
Copies of The Perv are awfully hard to find, which I thought was strange until I realised the title story is a graphic account of a pedophillic relationship. Or is it? You can waffle that edge, but the man-boy sex is explict enough that I'll be surprised if The Perv ever finds its way back into print.
Allameddine's style is too fragmented for my taste, but it's hard to deny that The Perv is smartly crafted, well plotted, and disturbing.
Copies of The Perv are awfully hard to find, which I thought was strange until I realised the title story is a graphic account of a pedophillic relationship. Or is it? You can waffle that edge, but the man-boy sex is explict enough that I'll be surprised if The Perv ever finds its way back into print.
Allameddine's style is too fragmented for my taste, but it's hard to deny that The Perv is smartly crafted, well plotted, and disturbing.
March 2, 2017
The title story is very impressive.
October 4, 2015
The short story "The Perv" is excellent. Captivating, surprising, arousing, troubling. It's worth four or five stars.
The Grandma and the Grandmaster was enjoyable to read and Duck recalls Koolaids in a nice way.
Ultimately, the book gets three stars because it couldn't keep my interest once I started Stacy Schiff's Vera; although, this might have something to do with the quality of Schiff's book rather than any kind of mediocrity on Alameddine's part.
The Grandma and the Grandmaster was enjoyable to read and Duck recalls Koolaids in a nice way.
Ultimately, the book gets three stars because it couldn't keep my interest once I started Stacy Schiff's Vera; although, this might have something to do with the quality of Schiff's book rather than any kind of mediocrity on Alameddine's part.
August 30, 2014
The title story is good but, for me at least, tries way too hard to be provocative. The rest of the stories, especially the last few, are more restrained and that makes them more powerful.
January 12, 2011
As always, wonderful. Wherever Mr. Alameddine would lead us, I would follow.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews