Rabih Alameddine’s forthcoming novel, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (And His Mother), publishes on September 2, just in time for Literary Sojourn. From this National Book Award finalist and winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction comes a tragicomic love story set in Lebanon, a modern saga of family, memory, and the unbreakable attachment of a son and his mother. NPR calls Alameddine “a writer with a boundless imagination.” His other six critically acclaimed novels include The Wrong End of the Telescope, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, and which the New York Times calls “spectacular”; The Angel of History; The Hakawati; I, The Divine; and Koolaids. An Unnecessary Woman was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, winner of the California Book Award, and a Washington Post, Kirkus, and NPR Best Book of 2014. The New York Times says, “An Unnecessary Woman is a meditation on, among other things, aging, politics, literature, loneliness, grief and resilience. If there are flaws to this beautiful and absorbing novel, they are not readily apparent.” Alameddine is also the author of Comforting Myths: Concerning the Political in Art, a nonfiction inquiry that Publishers Weekly calls “essential reading.” Born in Amman, Jordan, Alameddine grew up in Lebanon and Kuwait, lived in England, then moved to the U.S. He earned a degree in engineering from UCLA and an MBA in San Francisco before becoming a painter and novelist. He divides his time between Beirut and Washington, D.C.
