Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels Koolaids, and I, the Divine, The Hakawati, the story collection, The Perv, and most recently, An Unnecessary Woman. He divides his time between San Francisco and Beirut.
Book lovers will adore this moving tale ... Aaliya is a sympathetic
character but never a pitiful one, recognisable yet also
unique.
*Independent on Sunday*
The narrator of this exquisitely written novel, Aaliya, is an old
woman who lives alone by choice in her war-damaged Beirut
apartment. She's sharp and sour and not especially likeable, but
what redeems her is her love of music and books, especially the
latter. Her life story is punctuated by her musings on art, and by
the inescapable intrusions of the brutal real world.
*Mail on Sunday*
An Unnecessary Woman dramatizes a wonderful mind at play. The mind
belongs to the protagonist, and it is filled with intelligence,
sharpness and strange memories and regrets. But, as in the work of
Calvino and Borges, the mind is also that of the writer, the
arch-creator. His tone is ironic and knowing; he is fascinated by
the relationship between life and books. He is a great phrase-maker
and a brilliant writer of sentences. And over all this fiercely
original act of creation is the sky of Beirut throwing down a light
which is both comic and tragic, alert to its own history and to its
mythology, guarding over human frailty and the idea of the written
word with love and wit and understanding and a rare sort of
wisdom
*Colm Toibin*
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