Description
Book SynopsisA searing and visionary novel set in war-torn 1970s Beirut, from an author praised for his fierce poetic originality (Boston Globe) and uncompromising vision (Colm Toibin).
Trade Review"[
Beirut Hellfire Society] draws on Hage's antic, many-voiced gifts to make a chronicle of war and unrelenting death into a provocative entertainment." -- John Williams - New York Times
"[A] hell of a story... Pavlov is an irresistible lead: stony, well-read, tightly controlled, with a deep well of sadness. Call him Harry Bosch but in Lebanon." -- Nathan Deuel - Los Angeles Times
"Hallucinatory... [A] faceted meditation on existentialism." -- Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
"
Beirut Hellfire Society crackles with the kinetic energy of a dancer…The absurd volume of deaths is also tempered by Hage’s signature dark humor and stylistic playfulness." -- Toronto Star
"A wild, viscerally exciting and often bleakly funny novel of ideas. Comparisons aren’t always useful, but this reviewer thought of a work…equally unflinching in its de-romanticizing of a subject most of us prefer to avoid: Cormac McCarthy’s
Blood Meridian." -- Montreal Gazette
"Place: Beirut. Time: 1970s. But Rawi Hage’s
Beirut Hellfire Society is, actually, deeply set in any place consumed by killing and death during any time in human history. Fire is
Beirut Hellfire Society’s elemental core—inherited fires of grief and sorrow, justice and love. Fantastically framed, its envisioned images and scenes burn with a mythic intensity not easily forgotten. Truly a masterpiece." -- Lawrence Joseph, author of So Where Are We?
"Potent... Hage's novel is a brisk, surreal, and often comic plunge into surviving the absurd nihilism of war." -- Publishers Weekly
