THE BOOK FAIR

Review:

The story of Aaliya, the unnecessary woman, unloved by her mother and given away in marriage by her step-father, at the age of sixteen years old.  Her husband, the insect as she refers to him, abandons her some few years later to her delight.  Aaliya then works in a bookstore to maintain her independence as she secretly translates Western books into Arabic, thirty-seven books over her seventy-two year lifetime, but has never attempted to publish her vast work.

Aaliya manages to maintain her apartment in Beirut, fighting off the clutches of her family members who covet the apartment; she knows little of her neighbors.

Aaliya recently dyed her gray hair blue and deals with the uncomfortable process of aging.  She spends time reminiscing over her life, and offers the story of her friendship with Hannah, whom she met when introduced to her future husband, the insect.  Both women, unlucky in love and childless had much in common.  Hannah was the only person Aaliya ever loved throughout her years.  Hannah commits suicide some decades later for which Aaliya somewhat blames herself.

Aaliya occasionally ventures out into the city she once loved, but mostly she lives her life closed within her home spent with her love of Western literature and Western music as she simultaneously derides Americans, Christianity and Israel, referring to the God of Noah as a Nazi and Israel as an abomination.

 

Note:

Rabih Alameddine was born in 1959 in Jordan, to Druze Lebanese parents, lives both in Lebanon and California, is a graduate of UCLA.

In reference to writing this book, Alameddine writes that his parents were trapped in Lebanon during the Israeli siege in Lebanon in 1982.

 

The Jordanian government, in 1971, expelled Arafat and the Palestinians for repeated attempts to takeover  Jordan.  Alameddine laments the loss of Lebanon, once considered the Jewel of the Middle East, subsequently taken over by the PLO, for which after ten years of inflicted terror, Israel in defense of its own borders expelled Arafat and his fighters from Lebanon to the praise and thanks of the Shi’a and Christian Lebanese in 1981/82.