In other words, when fictive family is suffering the real pains of the Lebanese civil war, the mother in this book will say, tell me a story, distract me, enchant me, and the imagination serves that function too. And that is, after all, one of the places that the imagination springs from. In this book, people are often entering the world of legend when the real world is painful. They’re the atmosphere, and the real people feel like mortals walking around in this fairytale atmosphere. We meet many, many other characters here: Fatima, who appears to be a goddess, we meet Baybars, the slave king, we meet imps, djinn, witches and horses with magical powers. A story that ranges from the seven gates of the underworld to a deathbed in Beirut could only be told by a real storyteller, a hakawati–a spellbinder. There are the mythic wars of Arab lore, and the real civil war in Lebanon. But this is the story of a thousand threads interweaving legends, fables and parable. That’s the brightest thread of this tale. returns to his native Beirut after long years spent in Los Angeles to visit the bedside of his dying father. After reading I didn’t want to return to the mundane world. “Alameddine's intoxicating, ambitious, multi-layered new novel is a marvel of storytelling bravado.” Alameddine juxtaposes truth and fiction, contemporary lust and bawdy tales of the past, today's grief and sorrow in the ancient world.” One of the finest novels I've read in years.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |