Over the last year of interviews in the US and abroad, I have invariably been asked these related questions: What are you reading? What book is on your nightstand? What book did you just read? What book do you recommend people read? What author or book do you think is the most underappreciated? The answer I gave: An Unnecessary Woman, by Lebanese writer American Rabih Alameddine. And then I would have to spell out his name, because few had heard of him. Today, the finalists for the National Book Award were announced. Among the five finalists for fiction: An Unnecessary Woman, by Rabih Alameddine. (Book is shown smack dab in the middle of the photo below). This book received early and enormous praise from Colm Toibin, Aleksander Hemon, Michael Chabon, Yiyun Li, Daniel Alarcon, and other literary prize winners. I have been extolling Rabihs other books for years-- Kool-Aids, the Art of War, I, the Divine, and The Hakawati. I could not understand why he was not winning prizes or being invited to literary conferences and to speak at universities. I asked people: Was it because people think his name is hard to pronounce; it is actually easy: Rob-bee Ah-la-ma-deen. He is erudite yet funny and personable. His books are meticulous and sensorial in their literary qualities, yet you have the sense that the character is also a friend youve known and shared gossip with for a long time. The ideas within them illuminate us and our relation to the worlds --worlds with a fractured s. Within every line we feel, see, and breathe the intimate microcosm of a woman, Aaliya Saleh, a translator in Beirut, whose translations are never published, by her choice. And within her private ruminations on the works she has loved and translated, we simultaneously see the macrocosm of war, love, power, human nature, an ironic and historic perspective on war in the Middle East, as well as Aaliyas own struggle to maintain a steady sense of self in the chaotic and changing world. Aaliya will go down as one of the most memorable characters in literature. You can read more about this book in the description of this NPR article. While it is impossible to compare the finalists in any objective way, I feel that for so many reasons Rabih Alameddine should at last be recognized as one of our great and important American writers.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 16:52:36 +0000
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