Cockroach

Hage, Rawi

ISBN 10: 0241144442 / ISBN 13: 9780241144442

Published by Hamish Hamilton, Great Britain, 2009

About this Item

A true UK first edition / first printing, with a number '1' on the copyright page. Flat-signed by the author in black ink, and unmarred by a dedication or date. Page edges could be very very slightly whiter. Otherwise, a great copy of this powerful novel about identity and displacement by the acclaimed Canadian-based (Lebanese-born) author, winner of the International Impac Dublin Literary Award (for his debut novel, 'De Niro's Game'). This is the author's second novel. We protect all our books with a removable plastic cover, and send them with care.

Seller Inventory # 001094

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Cockroach
• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, Great Britain
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241144442
• ISBN 13: 9780241144442
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Main

About this title

Synopsis

During a bitterly cold winter in a snowy northern city, a self-confessed thief has just tried to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree in the local park. Rescued against his will and obliged to attend sessions with a well-meaning but naive therapist, our narrator tells her - and us - his heartrending and hallucinatory story. From his childhood in a war-torn Arab country, to his current life in the smoky emigre cafes of his new city, "Cockroach" traces our narrator's journey - his longing for a place in the world, his guilt over his sister's death at the hands of her husband, and his love for an Iranian woman, Shoreh, whose life is also a flight from the darkness of the past. As the stories in this remarkable book converge, our narrator must confront the events of the past in the form of another moral but potentially murderous dilemma in the present...

From the Back Cover

Praise for Cockroach: "[A] dark and uncompromising vision. [Cockroach] offers a version of an emigre underground which is original, raw and brave."-Colm Toibin"A dark Dostoevskian fable, which lowers the reader into the sewers of immigrant Montreal to confront an underground world teeming with sex, crime and greedy insectoid life."-Hari Kunzru"Searing, affecting, misanthropic."-Mohsin Hamid"Most fiction writers are primarily either stylists or plotters, but Hage is clearly both. There's a slight jolting sensation as the narrative shifts gear from poetic to cinematic, with guns and knives and elaborately contrived set-ups replacing the earlier evocations of drains and flesh and wintry streets, but it's all managed with great brio and expertise."-James Lasdun, The Guardian