An Unnecessary Woman - Rabih Alameddine torrent

Category: Adults, Contemporary, Historical Fiction
Language: English
Keywords: Book Club Books About Books Contemporary Fiction Historical Fiction Lebanon Literary Fiction Literature Novels Womens

Written by Rabih Alameddine
Read by Suzanne Toren
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Unabridged

One of the Middle East’s most celebrated voices, Rabih Alameddine follows his international best seller, The Hakawati, with an enchanting story of a book-loving, obsessive, 72-year-old “unnecessary” woman.

Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family’s “unnecessary appendage.” Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The 37 books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read by anyone.

In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman’s late-life crisis, listeners follow Aaliya’s digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut. Colorful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and Aaliya’s own 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.

A love letter to literature and its power to define who we are, the prodigiously gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a nuanced rendering of one woman’s life in the Middle East.

Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
Release date: 02-04-14