{"id":431,"date":"2012-06-15T19:34:56","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T19:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/library.ryerson.ca\/asianheritage\/authors\/rawi-hage\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T14:36:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T19:36:04","slug":"hage","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/authors\/hage\/","title":{"rendered":"Rawi Hage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon to an Arabic-speaking Christian family who were exiled to Cyprus during the the civil war in Lebanon. He lived in New York for nine years before immigrating to Canada in 1991 or 1992 and settling in Montreal. Hage earned an arts diploma from Dawson College and a B.A. in visual communication from Concordia University. He is an accomplished photographer as well as a writer. His work was included in the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s exhibition The Lands Within Me: Expressions By Canadian Artists of Arab Origin<\/a> from October 2001-March 2003.
Hage was awarded the Engel Findley award for a writer in mid-career at the Writers’ Trust Awards held in Toronto in November 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Beirut Hellfire Society<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2018.
PS8615 .A355 B45 2018<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Beirut Hellfire Society<\/em> follows Pavlov, the twenty-something son of an undertaker, who, after his father’s death, is approached by a member of the mysterious Hellfire Society–an anti-religious sect that, among their many rebellious and often salacious activities, arrange secret burial for those who have been denied it because the deceased was homosexual, atheist, or otherwise outcast and abandoned by their family, church, and state. Pavlov agrees to take up his father’s work for the Society, and over the course of the novel acts as survivor-chronicler of his torn and fading community, bearing witness to both its enduring rituals and its inevitable decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Combining comedy and tragedy, Beirut Hellfire Society<\/em> is a brilliant, urgent meditation on what it is to live through war. It asks what, if anything, can be accomplished or preserved in the face of certain change and certain death. In short, this is a spectacular and timely new work from one of our major writers, and a mature, exhilarating return to some of the themes the author began to explore in his transcendent first novel, De Niro’s Game<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awards and Honours<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

2018 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Literary Award for Fiction <\/a>(Quebec Writers’ Federation)(Finalist)
2018 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize<\/a> (Finalist)
2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize<\/a> (Longlist)
2018 Governor General’s Literary Award, English Fiction<\/a> (Finalist)
2018 The Globe 100 (Globe and Mail<\/em>, 1 Dec. 2018)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Carnival<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2012.
PS8615 .A355 C37 2012<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Fly is a wanderer and a knower. Raised in the circus, the son of a golden-haired trapeze artist and a flying carpet pilot from the East, he is destined to drift and observe. From his taxi we see the world in all its carnivalesque beauty and ugliness. We meet criminals, prostitutes, madmen, magicians, and clowns of many kinds. We meet ordinary people going to extraordinary places, and revolutionaries trying to live ordinary lives. Hunger and injustice claw at the city, and books provide the only true shelter. And when the Carnival starts, all limits dissolve, and a gunshot goes off\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awards and Honours<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

2012 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Literary Award for Fiction <\/a>(Quebec Writers’ Federation)(Winner)
2012 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize<\/a> (Finalist)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Cockroach<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2008.
PS8615 .A355 C62 2008<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The novel takes place during one month of a bitterly cold winter in Montreal’s restless immigrant community, where a self-described “thief” has just tried but failed to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree in a local park. Rescued against his will, the narrator is obliged to attend sessions with a well-intentioned but na\u00efve therapist. This sets the story in motion, leading us back to the narrator’s violent childhood in a war-torn country, forward into his current life in the smoky \u00e9migr\u00e9 caf\u00e9s where everyone has a tale, and out into the frozen night-time streets of Montreal, where the thief survives on the edge, imagining himself to be a cockroach invading the lives of the privileged, but willfully blind, citizens who surround him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awards and Honours<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

2008 Governor General’s Literary Awards–Fiction (English) (Finalist)
2008 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction<\/a> (Quebec Writers’ Federation) (Winner)
2008 Roger’s Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize<\/a> (Nominated)
2008 Giller Prize<\/a> (Finalist)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

De Niro’s Game<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2006.
PS8615 .A355 D45 2006<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

… Bassam and George are childhood best friends who have grown to adulthood in wartorn Beirut. Now they must choose their futures: to stay in the city and consolidate power through crime; or to to into exile abroad, alienated from the only existence they have known. Bassam chooses one path: Obsessed with leaving Beirut, he embarks on a series of petty crimes to finance his departure. Meanwhile, George builds his power in the underworld of the city and embraces a life of military service, crime for profit, killing, and drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awards and Honours<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

2006 Governor General’s Literary Award–Fiction (English) (Finalist)
2006 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction<\/a> (Winner)
2006 McAuslan First Book Prize<\/a> (Winner)
2006 Giller Prize<\/a> (Finalist)
2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award<\/a> (Winner)
2008 Prix des libraires du Qu\u00e9bec–Laur\u00e9ats Roman qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois (Finalist, for French translation: Parfum de poussi\u00e8re)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction (Short stories)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Stray Dogs: And Other Stories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2022.
PS8615.A355 S77 2022<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In Montreal, a photographer\u2019s unexpected encounter with actress Sophia Loren leads to a life-altering revelation about his dead mother. In Beirut, a disillusioned geologist eagerly awaits the destruction that will come with an impending tsunami. In Tokyo, a Jordanian academic delivering a lecture at a conference receives haunting news from the Persian Gulf. And in Berlin, a Lebanese writer forms a fragile, fateful bond with his voluble German neighbours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The irresistible characters in Stray Dogs<\/em> lead radically different lives, but all are restless travelers, moving between states\u2014nation-states and states of mind\u2014seeking connection, escaping the past and delicate threads of truth, only to experience the sometimes shocking, sometimes amusing and often random ways our fragile modern identities are constructed, destroyed, and reborn. Politically astute, philosophically wise, humane, relevant and caustically funny, these stories reveal the singular vision of award-winning writer Rawi Hage at his best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awards and Honours<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

2022 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Literary Award for Fiction <\/a>(Quebec Writers’ Federation)(Finalist)
2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize<\/a> (Finalist)
2023 Danuta Gleed Literary Award<\/a> (Finalist)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"Book<\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Anthology (Non-fiction)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Finding the Words: Writers on Inspiration, Desire, War, Celebrity, Exile, and Breaking the Rules<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

PS8373.1 .FR56 2011<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hage, Rawi. “On the Weight of Separation and the Lightness of the Non-belonging.” In Finding the Words: Writers on Inspiration, Desire, War, Celebrity, Exile, and Breaking the Rules<\/em>, edited by Jared Bland. Toronto: Emblem, 2011, 227-235.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Anthology (Short story)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Tok. Book 4<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

PS8237 .T6 T54 2009<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hage, Rawi. “Cough and Brume.” In Tok. Book 4<\/em>, edited by Helen Walsh. Toronto: Zephyr Press, 2009, 31-40.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Anthology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Closer to Home: The Author and the Author Portrait<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

TR681 .A85 B97 2008<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Byrnes, Terence. “Rawi Hage on the Roof.” In Byrnes, Terence. Closer to Home: The Author and the Author Portrait<\/em>. Montr\u00e9al: V\u00e9hicule Press, 2008, 94-95.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Selected Criticism and Interpretation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Bayeh, Jumana. “Undermining the Christian City in Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game<\/em>.” In her The Literature of the Lebanese Diaspora: Representations of Place and National Identity<\/em>. London: I.B. Tauris, 2015.
Electronic Book<\/a> (Access restricted to members of the TMU community)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beirut to Carnival: Reading Rawi Hage<\/em>. Edited by Krzysztof Majer. Netherlands: Brill Rodopi, 2019.
forthcoming<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dahab, F. Elizabeth. “The Arab Canadian Novel and the Rise of Rawi Hage.” In Edinburgh Companion to the Arab Novel in English: The Politics of Anglo Arab and Arab American Literature and Culture<\/em>, edited by Nouri Gana, University of Edinburgh Press, 2013.
PR138 .E35 2015<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Halabi, Zeina. The Unmaking of the Arab Intellectual: Prophecy, Exile and the Nation<\/em>. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2018, c2017.
PJ7517 .H33 2017<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hout, Syrine Chafic. Post-war Anglophone Lebanese Fiction: Home Matters in the Diaspora<\/em>. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. This book includes discussions of De Niro’s Game<\/em>, and, Cockroach<\/em>.
Electronic Book<\/a> (Access restricted to members of the TMU community)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Osborne, Marilyn Huebener. \u201cThe Changing Isolation of the Outsider: A Time-based Analysis of Four Canadian Immigrant Writers .\u201d M.A. thesis, University of Ottawa, 2013. Accessed August 30, 2013.
Available as an open access thesis from http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/10393\/24062<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Links and Other Resources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Publisher House of Anansi Press<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher Penguin Random House Canada<\/a>, owner of the Knopf Canada imprint<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kaouk, A\u00efda, ed. The Lands Within Me: Expressions by Canadian Artists of Arab Origin<\/em>. Gatineau, Que.: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2003.
N6549.5 .A65 L36 2003<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon to an Arabic-speaking Christian family who were exiled to Cyprus during the the civil war in Lebanon. He lived in New York for nine years before immigrating to Canada in 1991 or 1992 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":16,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-431","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21080,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/431\/revisions\/21080"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}