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News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop

not-for-profit - a workers'co-op - committed to social justice | 96 Bold Street, Liverpool L1 4HY - 0151 708 7270

The Angel of History

by Rabih Alameddine - £8.99  Little, Brown Book Group (Corsair) (2017)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9781472152381 | ISBN 10: 1472152387

Following the critical and commercial success of An Unnecessary Woman, Alameddine delivers a spectacular portrait of a man and an era of profound political and social upheaval.
 
Set over the course of one night in the waiting room of a psych clinic, The Angel of History follows Yemeni-born poet Jacob as he revisits the events of his life, from his maternal upbringing in an Egyptian whorehouse to his adolescence under the aegis of his wealthy father and his life as a gay Arab man in San Francisco at the height of AIDS. Hovered over by the presence of alluring, sassy Satan who taunts Jacob to remember his painful past and dour, frigid Death who urges him to forget and give up on life, Jacob is also attended to by 14 saints. Set in Cairo and Beirut; Sana'a, Stockholm, and San Francisco; Alameddine gives us a charged philosophical portrait of a brilliant mind in crisis. This is a profound, philosophical and hilariously winning story of the war between memory and oblivion we wrestle with every day of our lives.

"Here is a book, full of story, unrepentantly political at every level. At a time when many western writers seem to be in retreat from saying anything that could be construed as political, Alameddine says it all, shamelessly, gloriously and, realised like his Satan, in the most stylish of forms"
(Guardian)

(Price & availability last checked: October 2017)

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In booklists: Black, Asian and Middle Eastern Gay Fiction, Gay Fiction, World Fiction - Egypt, Writers by Surname - A, World Fiction - Yemen, World Fiction - USA,
In categories: Black, Asian & Other Diasporas, Fiction, World - Africa, World - Middle East, World - North America,

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