Carnival: A Novel - Hardcover

Hage, Rawi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393072428 ISBN 13: 9780393072426

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013

Synopsis

A stirring new masterpiece from the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award–winning author of Cockroach and De Niro’s Game.

In Carnival, internationally acclaimed author Rawi Hage takes us into the world of Fly, a taxi driver in a crime-ridden apocalyptic metropolis.

Raised in the circus, the son of a golden-haired trapeze artist and a flying-carpet man, Fly sees everything, taking in all of the city’s carnivalesque beauty and ugliness as he roves through its dizzying streets in his taxi. Fly is a reader, too, and when he’s not in his taxi he is at home in the equally dizzying labyrinth of books that fills his tiny apartment. His best friend is Otto, a political activist who’s in and out of jails and asylums, mourning his dead wife and lost foster son. On one otherwise tawdry night Fly meets Mary, a book-loving passenger with a domineering husband. So begins a romance that is, for Fly, a brief glimmer of light amid the shadows and grit of the Carnival city.

Along with Otto and Mary, Fly introduces us to madmen and revolutionaries, magicians and prostitutes as he picks them up and drops them off, traveling through a nightmarish town that is―we can’t help but notice―a parable for our own debauched, unjust world.

Wildly imaginative and darkly ironic, Carnival is a magnificent achievement.

About this title

About the Author

Rawi Hage  is the author of four novels. Beirut Hellfire Society was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Hage now lives in Montreal.

Reviews

Fly is a taxi driver. By night, he maneuvers the labyrinth of his large city, conveying passengers to their desired destinations. Among them are immigrants, professors, magicians, and lovers. Some of them are regulars, like the generous drug dealer, the altruistic exotic dancer, and the prostitute mother, while others he meets only for the duration of a single drive. Once a child of the circus, Fly is no stranger to the anomalous, and he is both fascinated and disgusted by the stories of his passengers and the worlds in which they live. His only social contact is with his passengers and occasional visits with his political-activist friend, Otto, and his neighbor Mary. Theirs are the stories gathered by Fly and related here with dark, insightful humor, casting a spotlight on the dingy corners and the lost people of the inner city where he earns his living. Rich with imagery and told in a broken narrative that mimics the chaos of the city’s carnival season, Hage’s newest novel is an enthralling page-turner well worth the trip. --Cortney Ophoff

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393072428
• ISBN 13: 9780393072426
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304