Named after the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt, red-haired Sarah Nour El-Din is "wonderful, irresistibly unique, funny, and amazing," raves Amy Tan. Determined to make of her life a work of art, she tries to tell her story, sometimes casting it as a memoir, sometimes a novel, always fascinatingly incomplete.
"Alameddine's new novel unfolds like a secret... creating a tale...humorous and heartbreaking and always real" (
Los Angeles Times). "[W]ith each new approach, [Sarah] sheds another layer of her pretension, revealing another truth about her humanity" (
San Francisco Weekly). Raised in a hybrid family shaped by divorce and remarriage, and by Beirut in wartime, Sarah finds a fragile peace in self-imposed exile in the United States. Her extraordinary dignity is supported by a best friend, a grown-up son, occasional sensual pleasures, and her determination to tell her own story. "Like her narrative, [Sarah's] life is broken and fragmented. [But] the bright, strange, often startling pieces...are moving and memorable" (
Boston Globe). Reading group guide included.
Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels Koolaids, I, the Divine, and The Hakawati, the story collection The Perv, and most recently, An Unnecessary Woman. He divides his time between San Francisco and Beirut.
