New Releases by Rawi Hage

"[A] superb collection."—Maclean's "Compulsively readable (and re-readable)" —Montreal Gazette A captivating and cosmopolitan collection of stories from the internationally acclaimed author of the novels De Niro’s Game, Cockroach, Carnival and Beirut Hellfire Society. In Montreal, a photographer’s unexpected encounter with actress Sophia Loren leads to a life-altering revelation about his dead mother. In Beirut, a disillusioned geologist eagerly awaits the destruction that will come with an impending tsunami. In Tokyo, a Jordanian academic delivering a lecture at a conference receives haunting news from the Persian Gulf. And in Berlin, a Lebanese writer forms a fragile, fateful bond with his voluble German neighbours. The irresistible characters in Stray Dogs lead radically different lives, but all are restless travelers, moving between states—nation-states and states of mind—seeking connection, escaping the past and following delicate threads of truth, only to experience the sometimes shocking, sometimes amusing and often random ways our fragile modern identities are constructed, destroyed, and reborn. Politically astute, philosophically wise, humane, relevant and caustically funny, these stories reveal the singular vision of award-winning writer Rawi Hage at his best.

Documenting German performance duo Prinz Gholam's choreographic work Since 2001 Berlin-based performance artists Wolfgang Prinz and Michel Gholam, otherwise known as Prinz Gholam, have been critiquing constructs of the self and the body. Following in the spirit of their self-published booklets, this artist's book catalogs their performances.

“Truly a masterpiece.” —Lawrence Joseph On a ravaged street overlooking a cemetery in a Christian enclave in war-torn 1970s Beirut, we meet Pavlov, the son of a local undertaker. When his father dies suddenly, Pavlov is approached by a member of the mysterious Hellfire Society—an anti-religious sect that arranges secret burial for outcasts denied last rites because of their religion or sexuality. Pavlov agrees to take on his father’s work for the society, and over the course of the novel he becomes a survivor-chronicler of his embattled and faded community at the heart of Lebanon’s civil war.

Rawi Hage est né au Liban, qu'il quittera après la guerre civile, en 1992. Il vit depuis à Montréal où il partage ses activités entre les arts visuels et l'écriture. Son premier roman, De Niro's Game (Denoël, 2008), traduit en quinze langues, a obtenu de nombreuses récompenses.

A stirring new masterpiece from the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award–winning author of Cockroach and De Niro’s Game. In Carnival, internationally acclaimed author Rawi Hage takes us into the world of Fly, a taxi driver in a crime-ridden apocalyptic metropolis. Raised in the circus, the son of a golden-haired trapeze artist and a flying-carpet man, Fly sees everything, taking in all of the city’s carnivalesque beauty and ugliness as he roves through its dizzying streets in his taxi. Fly is a reader, too, and when he’s not in his taxi he is at home in the equally dizzying labyrinth of books that fills his tiny apartment. His best friend is Otto, a political activist who’s in and out of jails and asylums, mourning his dead wife and lost foster son. On one otherwise tawdry night Fly meets Mary, a book-loving passenger with a domineering husband. So begins a romance that is, for Fly, a brief glimmer of light amid the shadows and grit of the Carnival city. Along with Otto and Mary, Fly introduces us to madmen and revolutionaries, magicians and prostitutes as he picks them up and drops them off, traveling through a nightmarish town that is—we can’t help but notice—a parable for our own debauched, unjust world. Wildly imaginative and darkly ironic, Carnival is a magnificent achievement.

Bassam og George er unge fyre i borgerkrigens Beirut og bedste venner, deres liv er fuld fart frem uden hensyn til krig og kugler. Alle kneb gælder, men bag det hele er deres knugende savn efter tryghed og samhørighed

Bassam og George er unge fyre i borgerkrigens Beirut og bedstevenner, deres liv er fuld fart frem uden hensyn til krig og kugler. Alle kneb gælder, men bag det hele er deres knugende savn efter tryghed og samhørighed

A bold, razor-sharp novel about a shadowy antihero navigating Montreal’s immigrant underworld. One of the most highly anticipated novels of the year, Cockroach is as urgent, unsettling, and brilliant as Rawi Hage’s critically acclaimed first book, De Niro’s Game. The novel takes place during one month of a bitterly cold winter in Montreal’s restless immigrant community, where a self-described “thief” has just tried but failed to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree in a local park. Rescued against his will, the narrator is obliged to attend sessions with a well-intentioned but naive therapist. This sets the story in motion, leading us back to the narrator’s violent childhood in a war-torn country, forward into his current life in the smoky émigré cafés where everyone has a tale, and out into the frozen nighttime streets of Montreal, where the thief survives on the edge, imagining himself to be a cockroach invading the lives of the privileged, but willfully blind, citizens who surround him. Cockroach combines an uncompromising vision of humanity with razor-sharp portraits of society's outsiders, and a startling, poetic sensibility with bracing jolts of dark humor.

Bassam und sein bester Freund George, den alle nur De Niro nennen, ziehen durch das Bürgerkriegs-Beirut der achtziger Jahre. In ihrer Kindheit sammelten sie gemeinsam Kugeln und Granathülsen in den Ruinen, um sie gegen Zigaretten einzutauschen. Seitdem sind zehntausend Bomben auf Beirut gefallen. Heute sind sie Teenager und haben Eltern und Geschwister, Nachbarn und Freunde verloren. Sie sind Überlebenskünstler, die ihren Anteil am Glück fordern. Sie ergaunern sich Geld, sie verlieben sich, sie fangen an zu leben. Aber während Bassam davon träumt, nach Rom zu gehen, wo" sogar die Tauben glücklich und gut genährt wirken", schließt De Niro sich einer christlichen Miliz an, um zu kämpfen. Bassam weigert sich, und eins ist klar: Er muss fliehen. Aber auf dem Weg zum Schiff in die Freiheit fängt De Niro ihn ab.

WINNER OF THE 2008 INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY PRIZE De Niro’s Gameplunges readers into the timely story of two young men caught in Lebanon’s civil war. Bassam and George, best friends in childhood, have grown to adulthood in war-torn Beirut. Now they must choose their futures: to stay in the city and consolidate power through crime, or to go into exile abroad, alienated from the only existence they have known. Told in a distinctive, captivating voice that fuses vivid cinematic imagery and page-turning plot with the measured strength and beauty of Arabic poetry,De Niro’s Gameis an explosive portrait of life in a war zone, and a powerful meditation on what comes after.