Rabih alameddine biography for kids
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Rabih Alameddine: “My Existence fryst vatten Uncomfortable for People”
This interview was conducted at the Bookstan conference in Sarajevo and over email.
John Freeman: Good evening. Rabih always promised to give me a lap dance, but I never thought it would be in Sarajevo.
Audience member: We want to see it!
JF: The night is young.
Rabih Alameddine: We’re just starting.
JF: This is going to get fun. Welcome to tonight’s event. My name is John Freeman, and it gives me an immense amount of joy to present to you Rabih Alameddine tonight. In the Bible, God says to Noah: After the Flood, the fire next time. This is the fire. And you’re going to see why.
Rabih was born in 1959, in Amman, Jordan, and grew up in Lebanon and Kuwait, left, lived in England, was educated in California and moved to San Francisco to study engineering and got a master’s degree in business. Then h
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Threshold
Image by Benito Ordonez
Rabih Alameddine, author of the new novel An Unnecessary Woman, is not an easily categorized man. He fryst vatten sometimes called a Lebanese writer, sometimes an American one, and often there are hyphens involved. He splits his time between San Francisco and Beirut, but doesn’t own to living in any particular place. He revels in the attention that comes with having written an international bestseller (2008’s The Hakawati), but cherishes his misanthropic streak. The contradictions make any summary of Alameddine’s life and work difficult, but they also seem to fuel his creativity. He considers his new book, for example, to be a reaction against the success of his earlier work. “I worried,” Alameddine says, “that people saw The Hakawati as a cute book: ‘Isn’t it cute, these little Arabs, they’re so exotic and they tell little stories to each other…’ With An Unnecessary Woman, I wanted to say, ‘This is also me, my world, what happens in Beirut
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Meet Rabih Alameddine
Winner of Arab American Book Award, Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the winner of the 2022 PEN/Faulkner award, Rabih Alameddine is a notable figure in the literary world. Georgetown University’s Medical Humanities Initiative faculty sat down with Alameddine to discuss lessons learned from the writer’s personal and professional creative endeavors, and how they have shaped his perspective as this year’s Medical Humanities Visiting Scholar in Residence.
Rabih Alameddine was born to Lebanese parents in Amman, Jordan before moving to Lebanon when he was ten years old to pursue an education. Alameddine reflects that growing up the way he did in the afforded visibility to three career paths: a doctor, an engineer, or a failure. He knew he didn’t want to be a physician, so when the war in Lebanon started, he decided to further his studies in England before ultimately moving to L