City Lights & Grove Press celebrate the publication of
“The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)”
By Rabih Alameddine
Published by Grove Press
From National Book Award finalist and 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 mother.
In 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 of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget.
Told in Raja’s irresistible and wickedly funny voice, the novel dances across six decades to tell the unforgettable story of a singular life and its absurdities—a tale of mistakes, self-discovery, trauma, and maybe even forgiveness. Above all, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) is a wildly unique and sparkling celebration of love.
Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels The Wrong End of the Telescope; Angel of History; An Unnecessary Woman; The Hakawati; I, the Divine; Koolaids; the story collection, The Perv; and one work of nonfiction, Comforting Myths. He has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He received the Dos Passos Prize in 2019 and a Lannan Award in 2021.
Daniel Gumbiner’s first book, The Boatbuilder, was nominated for the National Book Award and a finalist for the California Book Awards. His new novel, Fire in the Canyon, was a finalist for the California Book Awards and was also named a New Yorker Best Book of the Year. He is the Editor of The Believer and lives in San Francisco.
Praise for The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother):
“Alameddine chronicles a Lebanese family’s turbulent but happy lives in his ebullient latest . . . Throughout, the author skillfully juxtaposes unflinching depictions of war and deprivation with the narrator’s joie de vivre. It’s a ravishing performance.”—Publishers Weekly
“Alameddine is gifted at finding the humor in what for most writers would be singular traumatic themes, including AIDS, the Lebanese Civil War, and the plight of Middle Eastern migrants. Here, he applies his sardonic wit again to the Civil War as well as the calamities of Covid-19, Lebanon’s banking collapse, and the 2020 Beirut port explosion . . . A peculiar but lively and humane book [and] a sharp exploration of resilience in dark times.”—Kirkus Reviews
“A tightrope walk, a magic trick . . . magnificently articulated through the instrument of Raja’s voice.”—Alta
“A novel as expansive, funny, and poignant as its title promises . . . An especially wry, wise, comic style distinguishes this unforgettable tale of national trauma, community, familial love, and forgiveness.”—Julia Kastner, Shelf Awareness
“Rabih Alameddine is one of my all-time favorite authors and indeed one of my most read authors, so I mean it as no small compliment when I say I think his latest novel is one of his very best. The True True Story is a perfectly witty and tender portrait of the chaos and dogged persistence of one catty Lebanese philosophy teacher and his lovingly annoying mother. Great voice, heavy topics, funny prose, and a rich cast of characters!”—Samia Saliba, Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI)
This event is made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation