Rabih Alameddine at Elliott Bay Book Company

Lebanese author Rabih Alameddine will be reading from his new book

The Hakawati (The Storyteller)
from Alfred A Knopf Publisher

Where: Elliott Bay Book Company
101 South Main Street
Seattle, Washington 98104
206-624-6600

When: Friday, May 16 at 7:30 pm

About the book: The Hakawati - the word means "story
teller" weaves together the story of a modern Lebanese family in
war-torn Beirut. The city is bombed out and bleak, not how he remembers
it. His father lies in a hospital bed while his entire al-Kharrat
family camps out in the waiting room. The al-Kharrats, a rowdy and wry
bunch, are both exasperated by and take solace in one another. And they
tell each other stories. We listen in on hilarious, fantastical stories
of Osama's childhood and that of his grandfather, who was a hakawati.

About the author: Rabih Alameddine was born in Amman,
Jordan, and raised in Kuwait and Lebanon. He has an MBA and an
engineering degree. A painter as well as a writer, he now divides his
time between San Francisco and Beirut. Alameddine's previous works of
fiction include the story collection Koolaids: The Art of War, and I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters.