An unnecessary woman /

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Alameddine, Rabih, author.
Edition:First edition.
Imprint:New York : Grove Press, [2013]
Description:291 pages ; 22 cm
Language:English
Subject:
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/9899513
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9780802122148
0802122140
9780802192875 (eBook)
0802192874 (eBook)
Summary:"Aaliya Sohbi lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's 'unnecessary appendage.' Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The thirty-seven books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read-- by anyone. After overhearing her neighbors, 'the three witches,' discussing her too-white hair, Aaliya accidentally dyes her hair too blue. In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman's late-life crisis, readers follow Aaliya's digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut. Colorful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and Aaliya's own volatile past. As she tries to overcome her aging body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left" --
Description
Summary:Winner of the California Book Award<br> <br> Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award<br> <br> Finalist for the National Book Award<br> <br> "Beautiful and absorbing."-- New York Times <br> <br> An Unnecessary Woman is a breathtaking portrait of one reclusive woman's late-life crisis, which garnered a wave of rave reviews and love letters to Alameddine's cranky yet charming septuagenarian protagonist, Aaliya, a character you "can't help but love" (NPR). Aaliya's insightful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and her volatile past. As she tries to overcome her aging body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left. Here, the gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a nuanced rendering of one woman's life in the Middle East and an enduring ode to literature and its power to define who we are.<br> <br> "A paean to the transformative power of reading, to the intellectual asylum from one's circumstances found in the life of the mind."-- LA Review of Books <br> <br> "[The novel] throbs with energy...[Aaliya's] inventive way with words gives unfailing pleasure, no matter how dark the events she describes, how painful the emotions she reveals."-- Washington Post <br>
Physical Description:291 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN:9780802122148
0802122140
9780802192875
0802192874