The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)

This darkly comic novel recounts six decades in the life of a Lebanese family. It is told out of sequence, through a series of nested stories, by a gay 63-year-old philosophy teacher who confronts his past, his relationship with his mother and his homeland. Its span takes in the Lebanese Civil War, the banking crisis of 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 explosion at the port of Beirut. Rabih Alameddine drew in part on his own relationship with his ageing mother.