At 48, he has established himself as a formidable writer - someone with formal honors (including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002) and a glowing reputation among other authors. Released last week, 'The Hakawati' is Alameddine's fourth book. With 'The Hakawati,' which is set in 2003, Alameddine didn't attempt to write a definitive history of an Arab art form, even as he studied its traditions to give his book authenticity.

To top it off, characters talk openly about sex and lust - traits that can also be found in Alameddine's earlier fiction, including 'The Perv' and 'Koolaids,' in which Alameddine juxtaposes the AIDS crisis and Lebanon's bloody civil war.Īlameddine infuses his work with elements of his personal life (he started 'The Hakawati' after visiting his dying father in Lebanon), but he always cautions readers that his fiction is the outgrowth of his imagination.

It also has interweaving stories that borrow from the Bible, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, Arabian Nights, Tintin, Asterix and other literary sources that Alameddine has devoured since he was a child in Lebanon and Kuwait (where he also lived for a while). Layered with biting humor, like all of Alameddine's work, 'The Hakawati' is a kind of East-meets-West comedic clash of cultures. The novel's narrator is the hakawati's grandson, who visits Lebanon from his perch in modern America. Knopf, $25.95), a sprawling epic about a Lebanese grandfather who was once a grand storyteller in the Levant. Ironic, then, is one way to describe Alameddine's newest novel, 'The Hakawati' ( Alfred A. For me, David Bowie was more interesting than (classical Egyptian singer) Oum Kalthoum.' 'That was sort of my class - middle and upper classes. 'As teenagers, a lot of us just did not want much to do with Arabic culture - we looked to the West,' says Alameddine, sitting in his San Francisco flat surrounded by photos of his family in Lebanon.

The hakawati by rabih alameddine