Guapa
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Vierundzwanzig Stunden, die alles im Leben des jungen Rasa verändern: In einem namenlosen Land im Nahen Osten erschüttern gewaltsame Proteste die politische Ordnung. Der Arabische Frühling steht am Scheideweg zwischen Militärdiktatur und islamischem Regime. Und auch Rasas Welt gerät völlig aus den Fugen. Auf der Suche nach seinem besten Freund, der in den Gefängnissen der Machthaber gefoltert wird, streift er durch die Slums seiner Stadt. Nach Hause zu gehen wagt er nicht, denn seine Großmutter hat sein unaussprechliches Geheimnis entdeckt. Während die wichtigsten Beziehungen in seinem Leben zu zerbrechen drohen, muss Rasa seinen Platz in einer Gesellschaft finden, die ihn vielleicht niemals akzeptieren wird.
Schonungslos und ergreifend erzählt Saleem Haddad in seinem Debütroman von einer unmöglichen Liebe in Zeiten radikaler Umbrüche.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Family, identity, and politics collide in Haddad's debut. Rasa is an American-educated young man living in an unnamed Arab country. Disenchanted with the failed revolution of a few months prior and tired of his work translating for foreign journalists and businesses, Rasa finds hope and comfort in the arms of his lover, Taymour. However, one morning Rasa's grandmother Teta discovers him and Taymour in bed together: "There is everything that has ever happened, and then there is this morning." The tumultuous day takes Rasa from his grandmother's apartment, to slums to interview Islamist rebels; to a police station to bail out his best friend, activist and drag queen Maj; to the underground gay bar Guapa; and eventually to Taymour's lavish wedding to a woman. Throughout the novel, episodes from Rasa's past bleed into the narrative. Much as Teta spied on him and Taymour through a keyhole, Rasa examines his inadequate memories, trying to understand how everything fits together and how he can build a future, with or without the man he loves. It's a puzzling choice for Haddad to keep the setting unnamed. During America's post-9/11 bombing campaigns, Rasa thinks, "The city... had become shorthand to describe an event. The country that once existed was no more." That pattern is perpetuated here, but for whose benefit? Haddad, a former aid worker and consultant, navigates Rasa's interior and exterior worlds with empathy and care. The topic of gay life in the Arab world is richly complex, and Haddad's cinematic, evocative prose rises to meet the sensitive subject matter.
