Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Finalist
Rawi Hage
Carnival
House of Anansi Press
Jury Citation
"Rawi Hage’s freewheeling Carnival delights and surprises the reader at every turn. This vivid and wildly original tale is told with all the colour, clamour, and showmanship that the novel’s title evokes. Hage’s narrator, Fly, buzzes through the city in his cab relaying his impressions – by turns hyper-caffeinated and sleep-deprived – in electrifying, often hallucinatory fragments, shot through with violence, madness, beauty, and desire. It all adds up to a veritable magic carpet ride of a story."
About the Book
Fly is a wandering taxi driver who can’t help but analyze his various passengers, studying their behaviour from the vantage point of his front seat. He often befriends his customers, especially when they can relate to his love of literature, and tries to help the people who have entered his life. In the city of the carnival, where poverty and ignorance run rampant, readers are gems of hope. The ordinary people and extraordinary lives that pass through Fly’s cab depict a city of hunger and injustice, and Fly sees the world in all its carnivalesque beauty and ugliness.
About the Author
Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and, before immigrating to Canada in 1992, lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war. His two critically acclaimed novels, De Niro’s Game and Cockroach, were finalists for this prize and have been translated into twenty-nine languages. He currently lives in Montreal.
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