The Hakawati
Acclaim for Rabih Alameddine’s
The Hakawati
A
Globe and Mail
Best Book
“In the best tradition of magical realism, [Alameddine’s] tales commingle the fabulous with the mundane, the grandiose with laugh-out-loud wit.… [It is also] a fascinating portrait of Lebanon, a country that defies stereotypes.… As it journeys effortlessly back and forth between centuries,
The Hakawati
is also a saga of families, tribes, and nations that are like families—sprawling, bound by birth and passion, combative, destructive, and essential.”
—
The Boston Globe
“
The Hakawati
is both genius and genie out of the ink bottle, a glorious, gorgeous masterpiece of pure storytelling and fable making.… What is timeless about this story makes it very timely indeed.”
—Amy Tan
“A rollicking good read. Bawdy, allusive, sad, funny and universal in its themes, yet with a finely observed sense of place, The Hakawati is a splendid achievement.”
—
The Globe and Mail
“Extraordinary.… These tales have some of the biblical brutality of the Old Testament, tempered with the subtlety and magic of Shakespeare, and the wisdom and guile of Scheherazade.… Alameddine’s is a crafted work that—like the master storyteller—works its magic by stealth.”
—
The Times Literary Supplement
(London)
“A skillfully wrought, emotional story.… Alameddine should be commended for the chances he takes, and [his] prodigious skills.… He deserves credit for telling a story the West should pay attention to, and evoking the diversity of the Arab world (Christian, Muslim, Jew and even Druze, they are all here) that is often taken for granted in our ever narrowing perspective of righteousness.… Bravely ambitious.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle
“[An] entertaining, kaleidoscopic novel.”
—
Details
“An epic in the oldest and newest senses, careening from the Koran to the Old Testament, Homer to Scheherazade. It’s hard to imagine the person who wouldn’t get carried away.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer
“Exhilarating.… Audacious.… Alameddine has great fun telling this story, and it’s infectious.”
—
San Jose Mercury News
“Astonishingly inventive.… Alameddine’s enchanting language [has] a fascinating, lyrical quality.… He juggles his many narratives effortlessly, enhancing each with small details from the world they inhabit.”
—
Time Out Chicago
“Captivating.… A wildly imaginative patchwork of tales improbably threading together Greek mythology, biblical parables, Arab-Islamic lore, and even modern Lebanese politics [that] charm and amuse.”
—
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“No book this bewitching has ever felt so important; no book this important has ever been so lovingly enchanted.
The Hakawati
is both a snapshot of our current crisis, and a story for the ages. What else can we ask the djinn of literature for?”
—Andrew Sean Greer
“Be thankful for Rabih Alameddine’s new novel,
The Hakawati
.… David Bowie and Santa Claus can be found in these stories as well as Abraham, Orpheus, jinnis, sultans, crusaders, magic carpets, virgins, houris and, of course, evil viziers.… A book to be read and read again.”
—
Santa Cruz Sentinel
“Fables, both old and new, reinterpreted by Alameddine, weave throughout a modern-day story.… In the end, the tales create an intricate tapestry that displays the complexities of a family and a culture.”
—
National Geographic Traveler
“An
Arabian Nights
for the 21st century. Bewitching readers with tales of spellbinding genies and shape-shifting demons, Alameddine gives classic tales a modern twist.”
—
Rocky Mountain News
“Astonishing: a triumph of storytelling.”
—Aleksandar Hemon
Rabih Alameddine
The Hakawati
Rabih Alameddine is the author of
Koolaids, The Perv
, and
I, the Divine
. He divides his time between San Francisco and Beirut.
www.rabihalameddine.com
ALSO BY RABIH ALAMEDDINE
I, the Divine
The Perv
Koolaids
Copyright © 2008 Rabih Alameddine
Anchor Canada edition published 2009
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Anchor Canada and colophon are trademarks
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Lili Fabilli Osborne: Excerpt from
The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms
by Eric Hoffer (New York: HarperCollins, 1955). Reprinted by permission of Lili Fabilli Osborne, literary executor of the estate of Eric Hoffer.
Penguin Group (UK) and Assírio & Alvim: Excerpt from
The Book of Disquiet
by Fernando Pessoa, translated by Richard Zenith, copyright © 2001 by Richard Zenith (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 2001). Reprinted by permission of Penguin Group and Assírio & Alvim.
The Arabic word for
al-hakawati
, which appeared on the title page, was designed and drawn by Dr. Sami Makarem.
Chapter 10 was previously published in
Zoetrope
, in slightly different form, as “In-country.”
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Alameddine, Rabih
The hakawati / Rabih Alameddine.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37483-7
I. Title.
PS3551.L25H35 2009 813′.54 C2008-906976-5
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in Canada by Anchor Canada,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited
Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website:
www.randomhouse.ca
v3.1
For Nicole Aragi
Demon Destroyer
Luscious Dove
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
BOOK ONE
Praise be to God, Who has so disposed matters that pleasant literary anecdotes may serve as an instrument for the polishing of wits and the cleansing of rust from our hearts.
Ahmad al-Tifashi,
The Delights of Hearts
Everything can be told. It’s just a matter of starting, one word follows another.
Javier Marías,
A Heart So White
What Hells and Purgatories and Heavens I have inside of me! But who sees me do anything that disagrees with life—me, so calm and peaceful?
Fernando Pessoa,
The Book of Disquiet
One