Winner of the California Book Award
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
Finalist for the National Book Award
"Beautiful and absorbing."--New York Times
An Unnecessary Woman is a breathtaking portrait of one reclusive
woman's late-life crisis, which garnered a wave of rave reviews and love
letters to Alameddine's cranky yet charming septuagenarian protagonist,
Aaliya, a character you "can't help but love" (NPR). Aaliya's insightful
musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of
the Lebanese Civil War and her volatile past. As she tries to overcome
her aging body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced
with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life
she has left. Here, the gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a nuanced
rendering of one woman's life in the Middle East and an enduring ode to
literature and its power to define who we are.
"A paean to the transformative power of reading, to the intellectual
asylum from one's circumstances found in the life of the mind." --LA
Review of Books
"[The novel] throbs with energy...[Aaliya's] inventive way with
words gives unfailing pleasure, no matter how dark the events she
describes, how painful the emotions she reveals." --Washington Post
