The Hakawati

This was a totally virtuoso display of ancient tale-spinning and mythmaking along with a contemporary plotline used as a framing device. The main story is estranged son Osama's return to Beirut in an attempt to reconcile with his dying father amongst the turmoil of a surrounding extended family in the aftermath of Lebanese Civil War and Israeli bombings. In between, there are two strands of Hakawati (storyteller) myths that are spun out as sometime distractions, commentary or parallels to the main plot.

The myths centre respectively around a handmaid/enchantress Fatima (set in a fantastical world of imps and devils) and the Mamluk sultan Baybars (set in our historical past) and their allies/foes. They evoke the storytelling of the show more grandfather in the family who was a Hakawati to the local Bey (governor/official) and passed his stories along to grandson Osama.

I am reading Alameddine in reverse, having first discovered (thanks to my friend Liisa) his "The Angel of History" and "An Unnecessary Woman" both of which were outstanding. "The Hakawati" though is definitely his magnum opus.

Trivia
As author Alameddine clarifies in his afterword, his fictional Baybars is a fantastical extrapolation on the historical figure. For another take on the formidable sultan, you can read Robyn Young's "Brethren" trilogy, where Baybars is a main figure in Book 1 "Brethren" and Book 2 "Crusade".

ASMR in Fiction
I did tag this book as #ASMRinFiction because of this passage of pg. 237: "She stroked my hair gently, scratched my hair, clicked her fingernails together. We called this 'cleaning lice.' ... I'd loved it as a child, and I loved it now." Although the passage doesn't actually directly state that ASMR is being induced (although the "loved it" at least hints it), the close personal attention and clicking/scratching sounds described are pretty much exactly the type of actions that experiencers most often find to be triggers for the nerve sensation that has been labelled as ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response). show less

A good book: inventive structure, believable characters. There are many, many stories-within-stories; it's not too hard to keep track of which is which, but the narrative does jump around a lot, without giving the reader a chance to get deeply invested in one story before cutting back to another.

An amazingly talented, writer, Rabih Alameddine’s previous fictions, Koolaids (which mixed AIDS, the Lebanese Civil War, and Tom Cruise fantasies), his “Novel in First Chapters” I, The Divine, and the short stories in The Perv (whose titular story is told by a very unreliable, possibly insane, narrator) have shown him to be a first class literary trickster and fabulist. With The Hakawati he proves he has a story – many stories -- for us all. This is alive, vibrant, and life-encompassing novel deserves a space on the shelf beside the classic tales it remixes, to be read and reread. The best stories are the ones you can hear told again and again.

I had trouble with this book. There were moments of complete clarity and brilliance. I found the thesis sparklingly and moving. But, it was uneven and slightly bloated. Not overwritten, but overstuffed. And not in a way that was joyous. Kinda more middling Chinese buffet overstuffed. A little nauseated and not happy about it. But there were some things. The way he handled the war. The way he handled the cultural paradoxes. The jinn. Good is a fair word. But.my expectations were high with this one.

I had trouble with this book. There were moments of complete clarity and brilliance. I found the thesis sparklingly and moving. But, it was uneven and slightly bloated. Not overwritten, but overstuffed. And not in a way that was joyous. Kinda more middling Chinese buffet overstuffed. A little nauseated and not happy about it. But there were some things. The way he handled the war. The way he handled the cultural paradoxes. The jinn. Good is a fair word. But.my expectations were high with this one.

You can say that Lebanese has hundreds of lexemes for family relations. Family to the Lebanese is as snow to the Inuit.

Most of us are familiar with the fabled conversion stories, on the night Mario Vargas Llosa earned his law degree he picked up Brothers Karamazov and was bewitched, 24 hours later, having read all night and the next day he completed the tome and discovered that he was destined to be a novelist. What about Marx reading Hegel for days on end? Samuel Delany relates how he left his wife at home in the morning headed to university and work and returned that night discovering the house undusted and the sink full of the same dirty dishes. Her diversion was Middlemarch, she had read the novel in just 13 hours, and despite being show more annoyed he instantly forgave her behavior. Was my experience similar with The Hakawati?

No, not really.

I began this endeavor impressed with the citations from Pessoa and Marias, the novel then opens with The Arabian Nights bleeding into a contemporary Beirut. It is an exploration faily and exile, narratives and nightmares. This was such an enchanting premise and yet where it began singing it proceeded to whisper. I thought I had lost interest. Upon the heels of an afternoon hail storm, I returned to the book and read. 340 pages later I was finished if unsatisfied. There are multiple framing stores at play and yet each successive circle appears diminished. Each cross-reference sounding more hollow. I will certainly seek out other works by the author, especially in the aftermath of Jeffrey's review. I will sigh in the interim and ponder a lapsed season of the Premier League and what should've been a 5 star effort by Rabih Alameddine. show less

This is a book of stories that all blend into each other which means the structure is very fluid. I really liked this aspect of the book, though there were a couple of parts in the middle where it started to lag a little, but it picked up again quickly. However, Readers who prefer a clear, linear structure could find the format frustrating. Part of the story is set in the present, some stories concern the family history, others are historical legends and others are pure legend. I think mainly, it's about the importance of story and how legends are created and why they endure... though it's very open to interpretation. I would recommend it to anyone interested in fairytales and legends, especially Arabian ones.