The Angel of History

Posted on 08 January 2018 by Rabih Alameddine

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. Free Download Books The Angel of History author Rabih Alameddine – kino-fada.fr While I were aliveI loved you while you were alive and I loved you still but I forgot for awhile Forgive me, I couldn t obsess about you all the time, so you disappeared as if I d bleached my memory, but you came back, you know, like a fungalinfection remember thrush, the white stains that attacked your innocent tongue, looked like the snowy down on old strawberries, we couldn t get rid of it, and you hated it and I hated it and you wanted it over You ve been gone for decades, you hide dee While I were aliveI loved you while you were alive and I loved you still but I forgot for awhile Forgive me, I couldn t obsess about you all the time, so you disappeared as if I d bleached my memory, but you came back, you know, like a fungalinfection remember thrush, the white stains that attacked your innocent tongue, looked like the snowy down on old strawberries, we couldn t get rid of it, and you hated it and I hated it and you wanted it over You ve been gone for decades, you hide deep in my lakes, why now, why infect my dreams now Jacob, is an Arab, Yemeni born, son of a whore, a poet 50 something years old He is Gay.lived in San Francisco during the heights of AIDS Jacob couldn t remember his partner, Greg s, last days Satan provokes Jacob to talk to the fourteen saints rather than his dead hub...This novel contains so much naked yearning, sadness, despair, and exhausted hilarity poking fun at man s powerlessness in the hands of Satan and Death accompanied by Angels that we could be forgiven for imagining it a memoir Alameddine has given us something rich upon which to sup, slowly, for there is much to assimilate A poor Arab son of a whore literally, as it turns out is intellectually realized by nuns and priests in Beirut, schooling paid for by an absent father The boy an...3.5 This one was such a hard one to rate for me I really enjoyed An Unnecessary Woman , but at times, this one seemed a little cheesy with the devil death angel dialogue, but at other times it was very poetic, sad and everything I look for in a highly emotional book I found some passages that made me want to read them over and over Alameddine s creativity with words and structure put this closer to a 4 tha...Alameddine is a rattler of cages, an irreverent, provacative, sarcastic, funny rattler of cages If you are a reader with a free rein to explore all the books, the world around you and wish to stray into the land where drones roam, where poets cry, a land of delicious conversations, then you must of course read this.Will the poet decide to live again, yes with the loss, the pain, the memories and with the Holy Helpers and the ghosts of his friends and lovers helping him or will he choose to forg Alameddine is a rattler of cages, an irreverent, provacative, sarcastic, funny rattler of cages If you are a reader with a free rein to explore all the books, the world around you and wish to stray into the land where drones roam, where poets cry, a land of delicious conversations, then you must of course read this.Will the poet decide to live again, yes with the loss, the pain, the memories and with the Holy Helpers and the ghosts of his friends and lovers helping him or will he choose to forget walk along the way of the pills, bringers of cloudy memory Is Alameddine taking a last dig at our Western world, a world which tends to forget it...How would I feel if I had watched my partner suffer from a cruel, incurable disease How long would it take me to get back to normal Would I ever stop grieving her, my love, my wife Would I lose my mind Would I seek admission to a psychiatric hospital to find peace When I read about Rabih Alameddin s The Angel of History on the National Public Radio website, I knew that I had to read this book It sounded so unusual, so poetic I found that to be the case, but unfortunately, I wasn t as ena How would I feel if I had watched my partner suffer from a cruel, incurable disease How long would it take me to get back to normal Would I ever stop grieving her, my love, my wife Would I lose my mind Would I seek admission to a psychiatric hospital to find peace When I read about Rabih Alameddin s The Angel of History on the National Public Radio website, I knew that I had to read this book It sounded so unusual, so poetic I found that to be the case, but unfortunately, I wasn t as enad with the book as I d hoped to be.Jacob pronounced Ya qub in his native Yemen and reduced to Jake in the US to his dismay is a poet who works in a law office As he sits in the waiting room of a psychiatric clinic, we are privy to his thoughts, his mental rants, his grief, and his longing.This is not an ordinary novel I wished I could see it performed on stage Seeing the interviews between Satan and Death brought to life would have been amazing because reading them of...This is a near perfect follow up to Alameddine s first book the mesmerizing, surreal and haunting Kool Aids The Art of War probably the best AIDS novel I ve ever read The story here is intimate and focused a gay poet raised in the Middle East living in San Francisco post AIDS epidemic who is the sole survivor of his gay social circle but mapped onto a structure that is grand and epic Satan and Death battle for the poet s life, with cameos by 14 Saints who have protected the poet o...29th Annual Lambda Literary Award Winner Gay Fiction I decided not to write a review for this book Not because I don t have thoughts to share Rabih Alameddine said in one of his interviews, he wrote The Angel of History to provoke When I said I wrote The Angel of History to provoke, I meant that I wished to elicit feelings that readers did not expect, not necessarily by using shock or surprise I wanted to write a book that broke the fourth wall by playing with feelings, by switching paradig 29th Annual Lambda Literary Award Winner Gay Fiction I decided not to write a review for this book Not because I don t have thoughts to share Rabih Alameddine said in one of his interviews, he wrote The Angel of History to provoke When I said I wrote The Angel of History to provoke, I meant that I wished to elicit feelings that readers did not expect, not necessarily by using shock or surprise I wanted to write a book that broke the fourth wall by playing with feelings, by switching paradigms, by rattling cages. Well, I can say now, with his ...As brilliant and complicated as The Hakawati, and with the very best of Alameddine s signature brand of delightfully perverse humor, this is a book I ll be recommending to anyone and everyone I know who loves to read Alameddine s imagination is limitless, which shows t...Since I began to drop the pail in the well of my memories, I ve had no rest, no slack for that rope Whoosh fell the bucket and up came salty recollections Memory is a monstrous beast, biting forcing us to remember things better forgotten Satan wants him to remember all the ugly things, death pushes the black, vast emptiness of forgetting as they play with Jacob Jacob, poet, son of an Egyptian whore, a gay Arab man devastated by the AIDS epidemic lat...I fared better with this than Alameddine s previous, NBA nominated An Unnecessary Woman , which I found dull, slow moving and tedious Perhaps this storyline meantto me, since, like the protagonist, I too lived through the early years of the AIDS pandemic in San Francisco And this time I could appreciate the author s really exceptional prose style What I had problems with were the religious underpinnings, not having been raised Catholic, so I am sure there are whole levels, especially t I fared better with this than Alameddine s previous, NBA nominated An Unnecessary Woman , which I ...

08 January 2018

Rabih Alameddine