New Releases by Rawi Hage

A personal reflection on fragmentation, language, and place. Following one of the Turfan archaeological expeditions in the early 1900s, a fragment of a Manichaean text written in Uighur and Old Turkic found its way to the Asian Art Museum in Berlin. Originating from the Northern Silk Road region (now the Xinjiang Uighur Region in China), these "loose leaves" became a source of inspiration for Rawi Hage. Hage writes, "I was born near Byblos in Lebanon. The ancient city of Byblos is believed to be the place where the first alphabet was invented." Encountering this rare and precious manuscript, with its layered and multicolored words, Hage reflects on the movement, uprooting, displacement, and migration of both objects and people.

"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.

"[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.

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.

Es gibt zwei Sorten von Taxifahrern: Die Fliegen und die Spinnen. Die Spinnen warten geduldig am Stand auf einen Auftrag aus der Zentrale. Aber die Fliegen sind rastlose Wanderer – sie durchstreifen die Straßen, immer auf der Suche nach einer winkenden Hand... Fly ist so ein Wanderer – er ist im Zirkus großgeworden, als Sohn einer goldhaarigen Trapezkünstlerin und des Manns auf dem Fliegenden Teppich. Er lebt in einem wahren Labyrinth aus Büchern – die Gänge zwischen den deckenhohen Stapeln sind so schmal, dass er gerade noch hindurchpasst. Dieses Zuhause ist seine Zuflucht vor einer Welt, deren Hässlichkeit und Ungerechtigkeit er in seinem Taxi täglich erlebt. Er transportiert Prostituierte zur Arbeit, Drogendealer zum »Geschäftstermin« und natürlich auch ganz normale Leute. Aber als der Karneval beginnt, verschwimmen alle Grenzen ...

Winner of the Quebec Writers'' Federation Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Rogers Writers'' Trust Fiction Prize In the Carnival city there are two types of taxi drivers -- the spiders and the flies. The spiders patiently sit in their cars and wait for the calls to come. But the flies are wanderers - they roam the streets, looking for the raised hands of passengers among life''s perpetual flux. Fly is a wanderer and a knower. Raised in the circus, the son of a golden-haired trapeze artist and a flying carpet pilot from the East, he is destined to drift and observe. From his taxi we see the world in all its carnivalesque beauty and ugliness. We meet criminals, prostitutes, madmen, magicians, and clowns of many kinds. We meet ordinary people going to extraordinary places, and revolutionaries trying to live ordinary lives. Hunger and injustice claw at the city, and books provide the only true shelter. And when the Carnival starts, all limits dissolve, and a gunshot goes off... With all of the beauty, truth, rage, and peripatetic storytelling that have made Cockroach and De Niro''s Game international publishing sensations, Carnival gives us Rawi Hage at his searing best. Alternately laughing at absurdity and crying out at oppression, by turns outrageous, hilarious, sorrowful, and stirring, Carnival is a tour de force that will make all of life''s passengers squirm in their comfortable, complacent backseats.

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 naïve 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.

WINNER OF THE 2008 INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY PRIZE De Niro’s Game plunges 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 Game is an explosive portrait of life in a war zone, and a powerful meditation on what comes after.

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.