An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine
Rabih Alameddine follows his international bestseller The Hakawati with an enchanting story of the life of a book-loving, obsessive, seventy-two-year-old, blue-haired 'unnecessary woman', living in Beirut. This is a novel to savour.
An Unnecessary Woman is a meditation on, among other things, ageing, politics, literature, loneliness, grief and resilienceIf there are flaws to this beautiful and absorbing novel, they are not readily apparent. * New York Times *
Exquisite... An Unnecessary Woman is a story of innumerable things. It is a tale of blue hair and the war of attrition that comes with age, of loneliness and grief, most of all of resilience, of the courage it takes to survive, stay sane and continue to see beauty. Read it once, read it twice, read other books for a decade or so, and then pick it up and read it anew. This one’s a keeper. -- Aminatta Forna * Independent *
Irresistible… Candid and human. * Wall Street Journal *
Alameddine…has conjured a beguiling narrator in his engaging novel, a woman who is, like her city, hard to read, hard to take, hard to know and, ultimately, passionately complex. * San Francisco Chronicle *
An opaque self-portrait of an utterly beguiling misanthrope… Aaliya notes that: “Reading a fine book for the first time is as sumptuous as the first sip of orange juice that breaks the fast in Ramadan.” You don’t have to fast first (in fact it helps to have gorged on the books that Aaliya translates and adores) in order to savor Alameddine’s succulent fiction. * The Boston Globe *
Simultaneously a philosophical rumination, a literature class and a cry from the heart, An Unnecessary Woman is, precisely in its strangeness, a genuine literary pleasure: a complicated one. -- Claire Messud * Guardian *
Beautiful and unforgettable * The Times *
The narrator of this exquisitely written novel, Aaliya, is an old woman who lives alone by choice in her war-damaged Beirut apartment. She's sharp and sour and not especially likeable, but what redeems her is her love of music and books, especially the latter. Her life story is punctuated by her musings on art, and by the inescapable intrusions of the brutal real world. * Mail on Sunday *
Exquisite... An Unnecessary Woman is a story of innumerable things. It is a tale of blue hair and the war of attrition that comes with age, of loneliness and grief, most of all of resilience, of the courage it takes to survive, stay sane and continue to see beauty. Read it once, read it twice, read other books for a decade or so, and then pick it up and read it anew. This one’s a keeper. -- Aminatta Forna * Independent *
Irresistible… Candid and human. * Wall Street Journal *
Alameddine…has conjured a beguiling narrator in his engaging novel, a woman who is, like her city, hard to read, hard to take, hard to know and, ultimately, passionately complex. * San Francisco Chronicle *
An opaque self-portrait of an utterly beguiling misanthrope… Aaliya notes that: “Reading a fine book for the first time is as sumptuous as the first sip of orange juice that breaks the fast in Ramadan.” You don’t have to fast first (in fact it helps to have gorged on the books that Aaliya translates and adores) in order to savor Alameddine’s succulent fiction. * The Boston Globe *
Simultaneously a philosophical rumination, a literature class and a cry from the heart, An Unnecessary Woman is, precisely in its strangeness, a genuine literary pleasure: a complicated one. -- Claire Messud * Guardian *
Beautiful and unforgettable * The Times *
The narrator of this exquisitely written novel, Aaliya, is an old woman who lives alone by choice in her war-damaged Beirut apartment. She's sharp and sour and not especially likeable, but what redeems her is her love of music and books, especially the latter. Her life story is punctuated by her musings on art, and by the inescapable intrusions of the brutal real world. * Mail on Sunday *
Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels Koolaids, and I, the Divine, The Hakawati, the story collection, The Perv, and most recently, An Unnecessary Woman. He divides his time between San Francisco and Beirut.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781472119155 |
| ISBN 10 | 1472119150 |
| Title | An Unnecessary Woman |
| Author | Rabih Alameddine |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Little, Brown Book Group |
| Year published | 2015-02-01 |
| Number of pages | 304 |
| Prizes | Long-listed for Prix Femina Etranger 2106 (UK) |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |