Thought Patterns
by Emanuel
If you don’t know of Montreal author Rawi Hage then you’re missing out. I discovered this young Lebanese-born Canadian writer two years ago when I picked up his first novel, De Niro’s Game. With it this former cab driver has just recently been awarded a rich and prestigious prize overseas, after several domestically, and I am looking forward to his second novel due out this year.
Set in the 80′s, the book depicts two youthful friends, Bassam and George, dreaming of escape during Lebanon’s civil war with its 10,000 bombs and, as his publisher says so eloquently: “Hage’s energetic prose matches the brutality depicted in the novel without overstating the narrative’s tragic arc”. The title comes from The Deer Hunter and DeNiro’s Russian roulette playing character. Another review states:
The story [...] is told in a distinctive, captivating voice that fuses vivid cinematic imagery and page-turning plot, alternately referencing modern American action heroes and ancient Arabic imagery. The blend of the two is as startling as it is beautiful.
Rawi Hage also wrote this past weekend an excellent Op-Ed piece for the Globe and Mail on his chance to have the opportunity to ‘roam a borderless world’. In it he uses this great quote from Amin Maalouf, another great Lebanese author that I will write about in the future, and I will finish with it here:
You will hear Arabic, Turkish, Castilian, Berber, Hebrew, Latin, and common Italian from my mouth because all languages and prayers belong to me. But I do not belong to any. I belong to God and to the earth, and one day, I will go back to them.
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Books to Read (6) - Cockroach | Thought Patterns
on September 6, 2009 at 12:21
[...] already wrote about Rawi Hage’s award winning first book, DeNiro’s Game, and although it took me longer than I had expected to get around to his sophmore literary work, [...]