This year’s National Book Award winner, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible is also one of the most purely charming books I’ve read this year. It tells the story of Raja, a 63-year-old gay English teacher who lives in Beirut with his overbearing 85-year-old mother in a tiny apartment. Raja wrote one book 25 years ago, and as his true (true) story opens, he’s confused to find he’s being offered a writing residency in America on the strength of that one book. He’ll explain the problem with that, he assures us, but he’s got to tell us just one or two stories first…
Over the rest of the book, Raja loops back and forth from memory to memory, telling us the story not just of his own coming of age and the forging of his bond with his mother, but also the history of Beirut. Raja talks us through the civil war, during which he experienced his sexual awakening; the 2019 collapse of the economy, during which his mother became best friends with the local gangster; the Covid years; the 2020 port explosion. From time to time, he assures us he’ll come back to that residency — but just one more story before he does!
Alameddine’s prose is winsome, warm-hearted, and very funny, but it is still sophisticated in its evocation of the trauma Raja suffers. At the heart of the novel is the mother Raja keeps trying to consign to parentheticals, who, with indomitable spirit, refuses to be consigned. This book is a treat from beginning to end.
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