Rabih Alameddine

Early life

Alameddine was born in Amman, Jordan to Lebanese Druze parents. (Alameddine identifies as an atheist).

He grew up in Kuwait and Lebanon, which he left at age 17 to live first in England and then in California to pursue higher education. He earned a degree in engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Master of Business in San Francisco. Alameddine is gay.

Career

Alameddine began his career as an engineer, then moved to writing and painting. His debut novel Koolaids, which touched on both the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco and the Lebanese Civil War, was published in 1998 by Picador.

The author of six novels and a collection of short stories, Alameddine was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. His queer sensibility has added a different slant to narratives about immigrants within the context of what became known as Orientalism.

He has lived in San Francisco and Beirut.

Awards and honors

In 2014, Alameddine was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and he won the California Book Awards Gold Medal Fiction for An Unnecessary Woman.

Alameddine is best known for this novel, which tells the story of Aaliya, a Lebanese woman and translator living in war-torn Lebanon. The novel "manifests traumatic signposts of the [Lebanese] civil war, which make it indelibly situational, and accordingly latches onto complex psychological issues."

In 2017, Alameddine won the Arab American Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction for The Angel of History.

In 2018 he was teaching in the University of Virginia's creative writing program, in Charlottesville.

He was shortlisted for the 2021 Sunday Times Short Story Award for his story, "The July War".

Alameddine's novel The Wrong End of the Telescope won the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. His novel The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) won the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction.

Works

• Koolaids: The Art of War (1998)
• The Perv: Stories (1999)
• I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters (2001)
• The Hakawati (2008)
• An Unnecessary Woman (2014)
• The Angel of History: A Novel (2016)
• The Wrong End of the Telescope (2021)
• Comforting Myths: Concerning the Political in Art (2024)
• The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) (2025)

References

References

1. (January 9, 2015). "Rabih Alameddine: 'Right now in the west, Arabs are the other'". Guardian.
2. Schaub, Michael. (2022-04-06). "Rabih Alameddine Wins the PEN/Faulkner Award".
3. Curiel, Jonathan (April 29, 2008). "[https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Alameddine-3217366.php Alameddine]". ''SFGate'', website of the ''[[San Francisco Chronicle]]''. sfgate.com. Retrieved August 3, 2017.
4. Devlin, Kieron (Spring 2002). "[https://web.archive.org/web/20100823051002/http://www.mississippireview.com/2002/leilani-devlin-alameddine.html A Conversation with Rabih Alameddine]". ''[[Mississippi Review]]''. Vol. 8, No. 2. Archived from [http://www.mississippireview.com/2002/leilani-devlin-alameddine.html the original] on August 23, 2010. Retrieved August 3, 2017.
5. "Sassy, Queer, and Lebanese: Life Lessons with Rabih Alameddine".
6. Khatib, Joumana. (2021-09-01). "Refugees Are Suffering. This Novelist Won't Look Away.". The New York Times.
7. Waïl S. Hassan, "Queering Orientalism," Chapter 9 of ''Immigrant Narratives: Orientalism and Cultural Translation in Arab American and Arab British Literature''. Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. 199-219.
8. (April 6, 2018). "My wounds will not be healed in my lifetime: Rabih Alameddine". Livemint.
9. (January 19, 2015). "National Book Critics Circle Announces Finalists for Publishing Year 2014". [[National Book Critics Circle]].
10. (2015). "84th Annual California Book Awards Winners". [[Commonwealth Club of California]]. commonwealthclub.org.
11. Madiou, Mohamed Salah Eddine. (July 1, 2021). "Abject Talks Gibberish: "Translating" Abjection in Rabih Alameddine's An Unnecessary Woman". Pluto Journals.
12. "[http://www.arabamericanmuseum.org/2017.book.award.winners#Rabih 2017 Arab American Book Award Winners – Fiction: ''The Angel of History'' by Rabin Alameddine] {{Webarchive. link. (October 7, 2018 ". [[Arab American National Museum]]. arabamericanmuseum.org. Retrieved August 3, 2017.)
13. (October 9, 2016). "Rabih Alameddine: 'I think we lose something once we get accepted'". Guardian.
14. "Rabih Alameddine {{!}} Creative Writing Program".
15. "The 2021 shortlist".
16. (7 October 2025). "Here are the finalists for the 2025 National Book Awards". [[NPR]].