The True True Story Of Raja The Gullible (And His Mother)

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD“Alameddine is a writer with a boundless imagination.”—NPRFrom the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction comes a tragicomic love story set in Lebanon, a modern saga of family, memory, and the unbreakable attachment of a son and his motherIn a tiny Beirut apartment, sixty-three-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and “the neighborhood homosexual,” Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son’s desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail of Raja’s work life and love life, boundaries be damned.When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn’t be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja longing for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke...