Rabih Alameddine

The Hakawati

maryam

"Can you hear me?" I closed my eyes briefly. "I know your stories."
His chest kept rising and falling mechanically, systematically.
"And I can tell you my stories. If you want."
I paused, waited.
"Listen."

I picked this book up randomly last year at Half Price Books because the binding stood out to me. Otherwise I would have never known this gem existed. So fortunate to have picked it up and finally get through all of it.

However, it took me so long to get through! Nine months! Though, to be fair, I didn't spend all nine months reading it. I started, and then fell off the wagon, and then had to slowly force myself to get through it. 

But it was so good. It took me a bit to get through because the style of the book is different (there are many stories within stories, and the narrations are constantly shifting), but that being said, I really enjoyed the style of it. Parts of this book are funny, memorable, and also so sad, like the kind of sadness that settles into the bottom of your heart. This book is so rich and so deep, and while I knew that it was going to be that way from the get go, I had to be patient with it to really get a feel of all the flavors within the book.

I didn't think I was going to get attached to some of the characters as much as I did. But I did. I really appreciate the backdrop of Beirut and all the other settings, as well as the concept of stories delving into further stories.

If you've read Jonathan Safran Foer and enjoyed that style of writing, then you'll enjoy this book. If you like Arab folk stories, you'll enjoy this book. If you enjoy reading different books, then I really think you'll enjoy this book.

In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father's deathbed. The city is a shell of the Beirut Osama remembers, but he and his friends and family take solace in the things that have always sustained them: gossip, laughter, and, above all, stories. 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.--From publisher description.

The Hakawati

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