In conversation with Maryam Baig, DMA
Rabih Alameddine’s 2025 National Book Award–winning novel features Raja, a 63-year-old beloved high school philosophy teacher and “the neighborhood homosexual,” who relishes books, meditative walks, and solitude. An invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America offers Raja a well-timed opportunity for distance from his meddlesome, octogenarian mother with whom he shares a tiny apartment in Beirut. Told in Raja’s irresistible and wickedly funny voice, this is the unforgettable story of a singular life and its absurdities—a tale of mistakes, self-discovery, memory, and the unbreakable attachment of a son and his mother.
Rabih Alameddine is the award-winning author of several novels, including The Wrong End of the Telescope, An Unnecessary Woman, and Koolaids. He has won the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He also received a Lannan Award in 2021.
