Returning to Beirut after many years in America in anticipation of his father's coming death, Osama al-Kharrat finds a turbulent, war-torn city far different than that he remembers but takes solace in the entertaining, classic Middle Eastern tales of his hakawati (storyteller) grandfather. Reprint.
Osama al-Khattar, a Los Angeles programmer, returns to his native Lebanon for a ceremonial family banquet, and his grandfather, a "hakawati" or storyteller, begins to narrate the family history through a chain of interlinking stories that resonate thematically with some of the tales from the Arabian Nights. This is a lush, layered, and magical novel, full of ingenuous twists, and alive with a sense of history and myth.
- Genre: Fiction + Literature Genres, Fiction + Literature Themes
- Subgenre: Literary Genres + Types of Novels, Literary, Family + Friendship, Hobbies + Activities
- Publisher: Anchor Books
- Pages: 513
- Edition: Reprint
- Language: English
- Format: paperback
- Release Date: June 2, 2009
- Date Published: June 2, 2009
- Author: Rabih Alameddine