Rawi Hage

A searing and visionary novel set in war- torn 1970s Beirut.

Beirut Hellfire Society

De Niro's game

"A cab driver in a crime-filled, apocalyptic city begins a romance with a book-loving, married fare, who offers a ray of light and happiness in the grittiness around him in this new novel by the author of De Niro's Game."

Carnival: A Novel

Cockroach

From the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of De Niro's Game and Beirut Hellfire Society, a riveting, cosmopolitan collection of stories set in places around the world. In Montreal, a failed photographer's surprise encounter with Sophia Loren leads to a revelation about his dead mother. In Baghdad, a translator is held captive while facilitating work on a secret deal between Iraq and the United States. In Beirut, a disillusioned geologist eagerly awaits the impending destruction of a tsunami. And in Tokyo, in the mesmerizing title story of this collection, a young Palestinian graduate of an American university is shaken by news from the Persian Gulf. Rawi Hage's Stray Dogs travels between states--both nation states and states of mind--to vividly explore the sometimes shocking ways our fragile modern identities are born, die, and live again in our fragmented, globalized world. Politically astute, philosophically wise, compassionate and observant, startlingly relevant and caustically funny, these stories reveal the unique vision of Rawi Hage at his very best.

And Other Stories

Stray Dogs

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. In Rawi Hage's unforgettable novel, winner of the 2008 IMPAC Prize, this famous quote by Camus becomes a touchstone for two young men caught in Lebanon's civil war. Bassam and George are childhood best friends who have grown to adulthood in war torn Beirut. Now they must choose their futures: to stay in the city and consolidate power through crime; or to go into exile abroad, alienated from the only existence they have known. Bassam chooses one path: obsessed with leaving Beirut, he embarks on a series of petty crimes to finance his departure. Meanwhile, George builds his power in the underworld of the city and embraces a life of military service, crime for profit, killing, and drugs. Told in the voice of Bassam,De Niro's Gameis a beautiful, explosive portrait of a contemporary young man shaped by a lifelong experience of war. Rawi Hage's brilliant style mimics a world gone mad: so smooth and apparently sane that its razor-sharp edges surprise and cut deeply. A powerful meditation on life and death in a war zone, and what comes after.

De Niro's Game

A tale set during a month in a bitter Montreal winter finds a would-be thief rescued from a suicide attempt and forced into counseling with a naèive therapist to whom he relates his childhood in a war-torn country and his troubled present life in a series of smoky âemigrâe cafes.

Cockroach: A Novel

The novel takes place during one month of a bitterly cold winter in Montreal's restless immigrant community, where a self-described "thief" has just tried but failed to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree in a local park. Rescued against his will, the narrator is obliged to attend sessions with a well-intentioned but nav̐e therapist. This sets the story in motion, leading us back to the narrator's violent childhood in a war-torn country, forward into his current life in the smoky m̌igr ̌cafš where everyone has a tale, and out into the frozen night-time streets of Montreal, where the thief survives on the edge, imagining himself to be a cockroach invading the lives of the privileged, but willfully blind, citizens who surround him.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE From the internationally acclaimed author of the novels De Niro’s Game, Cockroach, Carnival and Beirut Hellfire Society, here is a captivating and cosmopolitan collection of stories. In Montreal, a photographer’s unexpected encounter with actress Sophia Loren leads to a life-altering revelation about his dead mother. In Beirut, a disillusioned geologist eagerly awaits the destruction that will come with an impending tsunami. In Tokyo, a Jordanian academic delivering a lecture at a conference receives haunting news from the Persian Gulf. And in Berlin, a Lebanese writer forms a fragile, fateful bond with his voluble German neighbours. The irresistible characters in Stray Dogs lead radically different lives, but all are restless travelers, moving between states—nation-states and states of mind—seeking connection, escaping the past and following delicate threads of truth, only to experience the sometimes shocking, sometimes amusing and often random ways our fragile modern identities are constructed, destroyed, and reborn. Politically astute, philosophically wise, humane, relevant and caustically funny, these stories reveal the singular vision of award-winning writer Rawi Hage at his best.

DeNiro's Game

Cockroach is as urgent, unsettling, and brilliant as Rawi Hage's bestselling and critically acclaimed first book, De Niro's Game. The novel takes place during one month of a bitterly cold winter in Montreal's restless immigrant community, where a self-described thief has just tried but failed to commit suicide. Rescued against his will, the narrator is obliged to attend sessions with a well-intentioned but naive therapist. This sets the story in motion, leading us back to the narrator's violent childhood in a war-torn country, forward into his current life in the smoky emigre cafes where everyone has a tale, and out into the frozen night-time streets of Montreal, where the thief survives on the edge, imagining himself to be a cockroach invading the lives of the privileged, but wilfully blind, citizens who surround him. In 2008, Cockroach was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award, and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. It won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, presented by the Quebec Writers' Federation.

Sophie Voillot

"Montr eal en hiver. Les rues sont d esertes, livr ees a un froid mordant. Dans un parc, un homme se pend a une branche pour tenter de mettre un terme a sa vie d'insecte. Il echoue. On l'oblige a entreprendre une th erapie avec une psychologue pleine de bonnes intentions a qui il livre malgr e lui une confession de voleur solitaire, r ev elant peu a peu son enfance, ses r eves, l'espoir et la haine qui l'habitent, et comment sa soeur le transforma en cafard... Ce r ecit sans concessions, port e par un humour noir et un puissant souffle lyrique, confirme que l'auteur de Parfum de poussi ere (Prix des libraires du Qu ebec, prix IMPAC Dublin) figure parmi les plus grands ecrivains de sa g en eration. Le cafard instille dans l'esprit du lecteur son doux venin, alt ere sa perception de l' ame humaine et illumine les t en ebres de notre epoque d'une bien etrange lumi ere."--Couverture.

Le Cafard

A memorable novel about the beautiful, twisted existence of life in the modern city, told from the perspective of a taxi driver.

Carnival

From the internationally acclaimed author of the novels De Niro’s Game, Cockroach, Carnival and Beirut Hellfire Society, here is a captivating and cosmopolitan collection of stories. In Montreal, a photographer’s unexpected encounter with actress Sophia Loren leads to a life-altering revelation about his dead mother. In Beirut, a disillusioned geologist eagerly awaits the destruction that will come with an impending tsunami. In Tokyo, a Jordanian academic delivering a lecture at a conference receives haunting news from the Persian Gulf. And in Berlin, a Lebanese writer forms a fragile, fateful bond with his voluble German neighbours. The irresistible characters in Stray Dogs lead radically different lives, but all are restless travelers, moving between states—nation-states and states of mind—seeking connection, escaping the past and following delicate threads of truth, only to experience the sometimes shocking, sometimes amusing and often random ways our fragile modern identities are constructed, destroyed, and reborn. Politically astute, philosophically wise, humane, relevant and caustically funny, these stories reveal the singular vision of award-winning writer Rawi Hage at his best.

“Truly a masterpiece.” —Lawrence Joseph On a ravaged street overlooking a cemetery in a Christian enclave in war-torn 1970s Beirut, we meet Pavlov, the son of a local undertaker. When his father dies suddenly, Pavlov is approached by a member of the mysterious Hellfire Society—an anti-religious sect that arranges secret burial for outcasts denied last rites because of their religion or sexuality. Pavlov agrees to take on his father’s work for the society, and over the course of the novel he becomes a survivor-chronicler of his embattled and faded community at the heart of Lebanon’s civil war.

Beirut Hellfire Society: A Novel

Madeleine Thien

Documenting German performance duo Prinz Gholam's choreographic work Since 2001 Berlin-based performance artists Wolfgang Prinz and Michel Gholam, otherwise known as Prinz Gholam, have been critiquing constructs of the self and the body. Following in the spirit of their self-published booklets, this artist's book catalogs their performances.

Prinz Gholam. Sweet Sun Speaking Similitude

Es gibt zwei Sorten von Taxifahrern: Die Fliegen und die Spinnen. Die Spinnen warten geduldig am Stand auf einen Auftrag aus der Zentrale. Aber die Fliegen sind rastlose Wanderer – sie durchstreifen die Straßen, immer auf der Suche nach einer winkenden Hand... Fly ist so ein Wanderer – er ist im Zirkus großgeworden, als Sohn einer goldhaarigen Trapezkünstlerin und des Manns auf dem Fliegenden Teppich. Er lebt in einem wahren Labyrinth aus Büchern – die Gänge zwischen den deckenhohen Stapeln sind so schmal, dass er gerade noch hindurchpasst. Dieses Zuhause ist seine Zuflucht vor einer Welt, deren Hässlichkeit und Ungerechtigkeit er in seinem Taxi täglich erlebt. Er transportiert Prostituierte zur Arbeit, Drogendealer zum »Geschäftstermin« und natürlich auch ganz normale Leute. Aber als der Karneval beginnt, verschwimmen alle Grenzen ...

Roman

Spinnen füttern

To paichnidi to D̲e Niro

Carnival is a new novel from IMPAC Literary Award winner Rawi Hage. WINNER OF THE PARAGRAPHE HUGH MACLENNAN PRIZE FOR FICTION There are two types of taxi driver in the Carnival city - the spiders and the flies. The spiders sit and stew in their cars, waiting for the calls to come to them. But the flies are wanderers - they roam the streets, looking for the raised flags of hands. Fly is a wanderer and from the seat of his taxi we see the world in all of its carnivalesque beauty and ugliness. We meet criminals, prostitutes, madmen, magicians, and clowns of many kinds. We meet ordinary people going to extraordinary places, and revolutionaries just trying to find something to eat. With all of the beauty, truth, rage, and peripatetic storytelling that have made his first two novels international publishing sensations, Carnival gives us Rawi Hage at his searing best. By turns outrageous, hilarious, sorrowful, and stirring, Carnival is a tour de force that will make all of life's passengers squirm in their comfortable, complacent backseats. Praise for Rawi Hage: 'A large and unsettling talent' Guardian 'Searing, affecting, misanthropic. I'm not from Lebanon and I don't live in Canada, but Cockroach managed to take me to where I come from and where I live now more powerfully than anything I've read in a long while' Mohsin Hamid 'The best novel I read this year was Rawi Hage's Cockroach. A dark book, narrated with verve and brilliance. It made me jump for joy' Colm Tóibín, Guardian Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war during the 1970s and 1980s. He emigrated to Canada in 1992 and now lives in Montreal. His first novel, De Niro's Game, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for the best English-language book published anywhere in the world in a given year, and has either won or been shortlisted for seven other major awards and prizes. Cockroach was the winner of the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Awards. It was also shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Rawi Hage

About

Books

Join the club