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Summary
Summary
"There are many ways to break someone's heart, but Rabih Alameddine is one rare writer who not only breaks our hearts but gives every broken piece a new life."--Yiyun Li
Following the critical and commercial success of An Unnecessary Woman , Alameddine delivers a spectacular portrait of a man and an era of profound political and social upheaval.
Set over the course of one night in the waiting room of a psych clinic, The Angel of History follows Yemeni-born poet Jacob as he revisits the events of his life, from his maternal upbringing in an Egyptian whorehouse to his adolescence under the aegis of his wealthy father and his life as a gay Arab man in San Francisco at the height of AIDS. Hovered over by the presence of alluring, sassy Satan who taunts Jacob to remember his painful past and dour, frigid Death who urges him to forget and give up on life, Jacob is also attended to by 14 saints. Set in Cairo and Beirut; Sana'a, Stockholm, and San Francisco; Alameddine gives us a charged philosophical portrait of a brilliant mind in crisis. This is a profound, philosophical and hilariously winning story of the war between memory and oblivion we wrestle with every day of our lives.
"Rabih Alameddine is one our most daring writers--daring not in the cheap sense of lurid or racy, but as a surgeon, a philosopher, an explorer, or a dancer."--Michael Chabon
Author Notes
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)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Alameddine's novel (following National Book Award-finalist An Unnecessary Woman) is the inner monologue of Jacob, a poet in crisis, as he checks himself into a mental institution for a long weekend, leaving his beloved cat, Behemoth, in the care of a friend. Jacob was born in Yemen to a Lebanese father and Yemeni mother, raised in a Cairo brothel, educated by French Catholics, and lived as a gay Arab expatriate in San Francisco at the height of the AIDS epidemic-an American who insists he doesn't "do Middle East conversations" and loathes the "poetry of nostalgia" but in whom the complicated experience of migration reverberates. Now interrogated by the specters of Satan and Death, who bring a host of saints to testify on Jacob's behalf, he spills his history-the lovers who have come before, and his initiation in the queer subculture, maturation as a poet, and deep engagement with literature-until it intersects with global history: the rise of al-Qaeda and wars political and personal, all playing out while Jacob sits in a hospital waiting room, wondering if he'll ever be called in. It's not really his sanity, but his identity as a poet, an Arab, and a gay man that hangs in the balance. The novel takes a nonlinear approach that is occasionally messy, but Alameddine brilliantly captures Jacob's mind as it leaps between memory and the present. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi Inc. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Craving respite from memory and the voice of Satan in his head, a gay Arab poet in San Francisco seeks refuge as his story spills out. Born of a Lebanese father and Yemeni mother, Jacob (the bastardization of Ya'qub) spent his childhood in a Cairo brothel where his mother worked; then he was sent to his wealthy father in Beirut and on to a Catholic boarding school, where he was harassed by students and seduced by a nun. But his most painful memories were of the deaths of the men closest to him, including his physician lover, in the age of AIDS, the disease that somehow spared him. The narrative moves between one day in Jacob's life, his journals and stories, and Satan's sly, witty interviews with Death and with the 14 saints who attend Jacob throughout his life. As his literary powers abated, Jacob wrote fiction rather than poetry, and three examples starkly illustrate the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and the sand nigger status of Arabs in the Western world. In this provocative portrait of a man in crisis, masterful storyteller Alameddine (An Unnecessary Woman, 2014) takes on some of the most wrenching conflicts of the day.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Death, personified as a beret-wearing connoisseur of misfortune, begins this novel by confessing a predilection: "Arabs make my life worth living, such pleasure they have given me through the years." On the evidence of the pages that follow, he might have said gay Arabs in San Francisco during the AIDS epidemic. Cue Jacob, who one night takes himself to a psychiatric clinic because he is haunted by drone strikes in the Middle East as well as by the memory of lost loved ones. He recounts his past while a host of phantasmagoric figures - including Death, Satan and St. Denis holding his severed head in his lap - discuss his case like sports commentators. The episodes of Jacob's life catch the reader like shards of glass: his childhood sexual abuse by a nun, the cruelty of his partner's mother after the man dies. Equally bracing is the release he finds in gags, whips and paddles. "Like all saints before me, I relished the ecstasy of martyrdom," he says. Occasionally the story leads down a forking path, as in one interlude from the perspective of a crashed drone. But Alameddine, entrancing and unflinching, is in easy command of his bricolage narrative, and he leavens its tragedy with wit. St. Denis is even good for an oral-sex joke. By the end, readers may feel as though they have been bound in the same S & M dungeon as Jacob, lashed, excoriated, yet ultimately transfigured and given to see the world anew. ALASTAIR GEE is a contributor to The Guardian, newyorker.com and other publications.
Guardian Review
A gay poet is haunted by memories of lost loved ones and visions of war in a story that moves between San Francisco and the Middle East In 1982 the first Aids centre and helpline was opened in San Francisco to help disseminate advice among the district's gay community about a strange emerging disease. The centre didn't use the terms Aids or HIV, because the disease didn't yet have a name. It was called the Kaposi's Sarcoma Foundation, after the telltale lesions that appeared on the skin of those infected with HIV. San Francisco was the heart of the Aids epidemic and is the setting for Rabih Alameddine's moving new book, which looks back from the present to the 1980s, when the epidemic was at its height. In his last but one novel, The Hakawati, Alameddine married the epic tales of the Arabic professional storyteller (the "hakawati") with a story of familial relations, as a brother and his sister keep vigil by their dying father's side. The voice of Alameddine's hakawati was arch, often camp, terrifying and emotive. For his new book Alameddine returns to this highly successful combination of a realist narrative with epic chronicling. The Angel of History tells the story of Jacob, a gay, Yemeni-born poet living in San Francisco, as he waits to check into a mental health facility sometime in the present day. The novel is framed around the single night he spends in the waiting room. Meanwhile, in Jacob's apartment and with his cat Behemoth for company, Satan and Death perform an intellectual duel if not for Jacob's soul, then for his sanity. Satan plays the lead role, urging Jacob to remember his past, while Death -- dour, languid and uninterested -- would have him forget ("Death can ruin everything with a single touch. Oblivion is his trade"). Satan holds court with Death and, one by one, with the 14 saints who have safeguarded Jacob, from his beginnings with a prostitute mother in a Cairo brothel, to life with his wealthy father in Lebanon, through the torment of Catholic boarding school. It's among San Francisco's queers that he finally finds a place where he is not shunned but welcomed. Jacob has gone to the psychiatric clinic partly because he can hear Satan speaking to him, but also because of a public meltdown in a smart San Francisco restaurant, occasioned by a chance remark about a Joan Didion memoir. Jacob is struggling, decades on, with the death of his partner Doc from Aids -- and not just Doc, but the entire group of friends: Greg and Lou and Pinto and Chris and Jim, who died agonisingly, one by one, nursed by Jacob who alone managed to survive. The memories of their deaths ("blood wintering in the floor's cracks") are heart-wrenching and interspersed throughout the novel. Surviving turns out to be a lonely business and, in a series of unfulfilling encounters, a dazed Jacob spends the following years trying to restore what he has lost. Eventually he loses his faith in many things, but most of all in his beloved poetry. He wants only to forget and this is what Satan, suitably sardonic and sharply dressed, tries to stop him doing, urging him back to the knowledge that might yet save him. This is a story of one life and many themes: death and sex; religion; war; love and loss and the need to remember Having survived one kind of war, namely the assault on homosexual life by Aids in the 80s, Joseph finds himself in another as his adoptive country starts sending killer drones over the countries he grew up in. Here and there the novel takes surreal and daring turns. One chapter is narrated by an unknown guest at a party where the hosts keep a pet Arab in a cage. In another a downed drone falls in love with a village boy named Mohamed, is recovered by the American army, rebooted and sent out again. "Sure, I enjoyed bombing Jeeps and camels in Yemen, jerry-built shacks in Afghanistan and holes-in-the-wall in Pakistan, mud huts in Somalia, loved watching terrorists and collateral damage explode and disintegrate," says the drone -- but, like Jacob, its memory is holding something back. Eventually it flies over Mohamed's village, and, after spying the boy's bare buttocks being thrashed in the square, drives out the jihadists and turns it into a capitalist's dream with a Wendy's and McDonald's. The villagers are bombed into conforming to western values, just as gay men were bullied by the dominant culture. Like Alameddine's last book, the National Book award-shortlisted An Unnecessary Woman, this is a story of one life and many themes: in this case, death and sex; religion; war; the purpose of art and of love and loss; and the need to remember. Here is a book, full of story, unrepentantly political at every level. At a time when many western writers seem to be in retreat from saying anything that could be construed as political, Alameddine says it all, shamelessly, gloriously and, realised like his Satan, in the most stylish of forms. - Aminatta Forna.
Library Journal Review
How does the mind grapple with transition, change, loneliness, and deterioration? Alameddine's (An Unnecessary Woman; I, the Divine) body of work is an extended meditation on this central question. Though set in a psychiatric clinic waiting room, the novel delves into the structural and temporal landscape of Jacob's mind. The Yemen-born protagonist scavenges through the disparate memories of his transient life, from Beirut to San Francisco. His life is a constant struggle for acceptance and stability from a distant mother, an absent father, and a string of emotionally unavailable partners. Grieving the recent death of his boyfriend, Jacob is adrift in a blur of sadness, depression, and suicidal tendencies. Accompanying him on this retrospection are Satan, Death, and various saints, all vying to control the narrative of Jacob's past, present, and future. This colorful cast of characters simultaneously challenges and encourages his mutinous path toward a final solution. VERDICT With humor and wit, Alameddine reconfigures the self in exile and all its implications. [See Prepub Alert, 4/25/16.]-Joshua Finnell, Los Alamos National Lab., NM © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.