{"product_id":"the-hakawati","title":"The Hakawati","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn astonishingly inventive, wonderfully exuberant novel that takes us from the shimmering dunes of ancient Egypt to the war-torn streets of twenty-first-century Lebanon. In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father's deathbed. The city is a shell of the Beirut Osama remembers, but he and his friends and family take solace in the things that have always sustained them: gossip, laughter, and, above all, stories. Osama's grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching stories--of his arrival in Lebanon, an orphan of the Turkish wars, and of how he earned the name al-Kharrat, the fibster--are interwoven with classic tales of the Middle East, stunningly reimagined. Here are Abraham and Isaac; Ishmael, father of the Arab tribes; the ancient, fabled Fatima; and Baybars, the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders. Here, too, are contemporary Lebanese whose stories tell a larger, heartbreaking tale of seemingly endless war--and of survival. Like a true hakawati, Rabih Alameddine has given us an Arabian Nights for this century--a funny, captivating novel that enchants and dazzles from its very first lines: “Listen. Let me take you on a journey beyond imagining. Let me tell you a story.”\u003cbr\u003e\nDimensions: 111 x 178 x 13\u003cbr\u003e\nAuthor: Rabih Alameddine\u003cbr\u003e\nISBN: 9780330469692\u003cbr\u003e\nFormat: Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\nPages: 513\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bookhero.ae","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49075388121241,"sku":"14RD9780330469692","price":10.0,"currency_code":"AED","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0580\/5696\/6297\/files\/The_Hakawati.jpg?v=1790144421","url":"https:\/\/bookhero.ae\/products\/the-hakawati","provider":"Dubai - Buy Used\/Second-Hand Books - BookHero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}