Rabih Alameddine
Author of An Unnecessary Woman
About the Author
He is a writer & artist living in San Francisco. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Koolaids: The Art of War & The Perv. (Bowker Author Biography)
Image credit: Elena Siebert
Works by Rabih Alameddine
Associated Works
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (2010) — Contributor — 981 copies
Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases (2020) — Contributor — 183 copies
Dinarzad's Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction (2004) — Contributor, some editions — 26 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1959
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Lebanon
USA - Birthplace
- Amman, Jordan
- Places of residence
- Kuwait
Lebanon
California, USA
England, UK
Jordan - Education
- University of California, Los Angeles
- Occupations
- writer
painter - Awards and honors
- Guggenheim Fellowship
John Dos Passos Prize (2019)
Members
Discussions
Focus on: An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine in Book Focus (April 2022)
Reviews
Lists
Reading Globally (1)
Refugee crisis (1)
World Books (1)
to get (1)
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 11
- Also by
- 6
- Members
- 2,847
- Popularity
- #9,012
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 142
- ISBNs
- 111
- Languages
- 15
- Favorited
- 6
The main character is a so-called "unnecessary woman", living in Lebanon during the civil war. No one seems to want or need her, even her husband. She spends her life translating writers, storing up boxes of gradually bettering translations of the classics and new writers into Arabic.
I loved this complaining, grumbly women. She's 72, but I can identify with her feelings of invisibility and her need for something significant to hang onto. I traveled through this book, gradually coming to dread the end - both because I thought it would end one way (it doesn't) and because I feel I've lost the kind of person I would have loved to have spent afternoons with, discussing literature.
The true pleasure in this book are the selected words of other writers and her wise, cheeky, worldly interpretation of them.
Highly highly recommended. I found myself smiling throughout and weeping near the end. Truly a read to wallow in.
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