This is a book of stories that all blend into each other which means the structure is very fluid. I really liked this aspect of the book, though there were a couple of parts in the middle where it started to lag a little, but it picked up again quickly. However, Readers who prefer a clear, linear structure could find the format frustrating. Part of the story is set in the present, some stories concern the family history, others are historical legends and others are pure legend. I think mainly, it's about the importance of story and how legends are created and why they endure... though it's very open to interpretation. I would recommend it to anyone interested in fairytales and legends, especially Arabian ones. ( )

I had trouble with this book. There were moments of complete clarity and brilliance. I found the thesis sparklingly and moving. But, it was uneven and slightly bloated. Not overwritten, but overstuffed. And not in a way that was joyous. Kinda more middling Chinese buffet overstuffed. A little nauseated and not happy about it. But there were some things. The way he handled the war. The way he handled the cultural paradoxes. The jinn. Good is a fair word. But.my expectations were high with this one. ( )

I had trouble with this book. There were moments of complete clarity and brilliance. I found the thesis sparklingly and moving. But, it was uneven and slightly bloated. Not overwritten, but overstuffed. And not in a way that was joyous. Kinda more middling Chinese buffet overstuffed. A little nauseated and not happy about it. But there were some things. The way he handled the war. The way he handled the cultural paradoxes. The jinn. Good is a fair word. But.my expectations were high with this one. ( )

story inside a story inside a story: The storyteller's family story, the story he tells about the King, and the story the king tells his queen.
re-read! ( )

You can say that Lebanese has hundreds of lexemes for family relations. Family to the Lebanese is as snow to the Inuit.

Most of us are familiar with the fabled conversion stories, on the night Mario Vargas Llosa earned his law degree he picked up Brothers Karamazov and was bewitched, 24 hours later, having read all night and the next day he completed the tome and discovered that he was destined to be a novelist. What about Marx reading Hegel for days on end? Samuel Delany relates how he left his wife at home in the morning headed to university and work and returned that night discovering the house undusted and the sink full of the same dirty dishes. Her diversion was Middlemarch, she had read the novel in just 13 hours, and despite being annoyed he instantly forgave her behavior. Was my experience similar with The Hakawati?

No, not really.

I began this endeavor impressed with the citations from Pessoa and Marias, the novel then opens with The Arabian Nights bleeding into a contemporary Beirut. It is an exploration faily and exile, narratives and nightmares. This was such an enchanting premise and yet where it began singing it proceeded to whisper. I thought I had lost interest. Upon the heels of an afternoon hail storm, I returned to the book and read. 340 pages later I was finished if unsatisfied. There are multiple framing stores at play and yet each successive circle appears diminished. Each cross-reference sounding more hollow. I will certainly seek out other works by the author, especially in the aftermath of Jeffrey's review. I will sigh in the interim and ponder a lapsed season of the Premier League and what should've been a 5 star effort by Rabih Alameddine.
( )