Introduction:
Rabih Alameddine is a Lebanese Druze painter, writer and professor. He was born in Jordan in 1959, growing up in between Kuwait and Lebanon until 1976 at the age of seventeen.
The Lebanese Civil War began in earnest in 1975, lasting until 1990. During this time an estimated one million people left Lebanon. Much of the conflict is attributed to have come from the lingering effects of European colonization, religious influence within government, and shifting alliances between nations (namely Palestine, Syria, Israel, and Lebanon).
Content warnings:
Descriptions of sex, death, murder, and violence. Mentions of sexual assault.
Overview:
Koolaids: The Art of War is Rabih Alameddine’s debut novel, published in 1998. The novel compares and contrasts the two wars Alameddine found himself thrust into the center of, being witness to the Lebanese Civil War as a child and then the AIDS epidemic as a gay, adult man.
There is no singular narrator, Alameddine’s novel being comprised of first person narrative, letters, news articles, and poetry. The central character being Mohammed, a gay painter living with HIV in San Francisco during the height of the AIDS crisis in the United States. Mohammed goes between discussing his life as an adult, watching many of his friends succumb to HIV, and his childhood growing up in Lebanon and discovering his sexuality.
Alameddine’s writing combines elements of different written media to create a novel that acts as a time capsule, a eulogy, and a memorial. Comparing the loss, trauma, and grief in the wake of two separate wars entwined within a distinct community.
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