If you are looking for a great book to read this summer, here is one: De Niro's game!! I am very honored to know his author who is the person I am subletting from: Rawi Hage. The book has been translated in many languages including French (Parfum de poussière).
Canadian novelist's first book wins world's richest literary prize De Niro's Game by Canadian Rawi Hage has won the 13th annual International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the world's richest literary prize -- €100,000 (or about $160,000 Canadian) for a single work of fiction published in English. The win was announced today in Dublin, and marks the first time a debut book has won the prize. Hage is only the second Canadian to win the award, after Alistair MacLeod in 2001 for his novel No Great Mischief.
The IMPAC award caps a whirlwind ascent to literary stardom for an author whose book was pulled from publisher House of Anansi's slushpile, and was written in the Montreal resident's third language, English (he also speaks Arabic and French). Nominated for prestigious literary prizes in Canada and abroad -- including the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book -- De Niro's Game has so far been sold in fifteen territories, and can be read in a dozen languages. The French edition of De Niro's Game recently won the Prix des libraries du Quebec in time for its release in France, where Hage will appear at Festival America in Vincennes in September.
In 1992, Hage emigrated to Montreal after having lived through nine years of the Lebanese Civil War. Only two years ago, Rawi Hage was working as a visual artist making ends meet driving a cab. All that changed with the publication of De Niro's Game. With its haunting first words, "Ten thousand bombs had landed," Hage's novel crafts a beautiful and explosive portrait of young men who have been shaped by lifelong experience of war.
The IMPAC award is not only lucrative for the author, it is especially meaningful for readers because the books selected are nominated by public libraries from around the world. De Niro's Game was chosen by the Winnipeg Public Library and triumphed in the competition over 137 nominated titles by 162 public libraries from 45 countries.
"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."
In Rawi Hage's astonishing and unforgettable novel, this famous quote by Camus becomes a touchstone for two young men caught in Lebanon's civil war. Bassam and George are childhood best friends who have grown to adulthood in wartorn Beirut. Now they must choose their futures: to stay in the city and consolidate power through crime; or to go into exile abroad, alienated from the only existence they have known. Bassam chooses one path: Obsessed with leaving Beirut, he embarks on a series of petty crimes to finance his departure. Meanwhile, George builds his power in the underworld of the city and embraces a life of military service, crime for profit, killing, and drugs.
Told in the voice of Bassam,
De Niro's Game is a beautiful, explosive portrait of a contemporary young man shaped by a lifelong experience of war.
Rawi Hage brilliantly fuses vivid, jump-cut cinematic imagery with the measured strength and beauty of Arabic poetry. His style mimics a world gone mad: so smooth and apparently sane that its razor-sharp edges surprise and cut deeply. A powerful meditation on life and death in a war zone, and what comes after.
