Sanctity

In this politically sharp and acutely observant novel, a prize-winning writer is drawn into a mysterious correspondence with a Gulf prince.

Sanctity tells the story of a man who literally embodies our world’s most conflicted identities: an atheist from a Christian Arab family in Beirut who immigrates with a Jewish woman to Montreal, where he is often mistaken for Muslim. As we meet Rashid El Hajj, he has been invited to a book fair in the UAE, where he encounters a prince who becomes his patron.

Filled with Hage’s signature satirical wit, Sanctity follows Rashid’s travels from Abu Dhabi to Europe to Beirut, as he’s thrown on an unimaginable journey back into his past, confronting memories as a soldier in the Civil War. Meanwhile, his now-grown daughter, Pythia, follows her boyfriend to Israel against Rashid’s wishes. The relationship between a father unable to live up to his obligations and a daughter searching for truth about her father’s past becomes the beating heart of this stunning and provocative novel about the delicate and often dangerous zone between identities and their consequences.