Reading Guide

Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war.  When he was 18, he left Beirut for North America – first settling in New York, then moving to Montreal in 1992 where he attended Dawson College and Concordia University.  His debut novel, De Niro’s Game was shortlisted for and awarded a number of prizes including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The French translation, Parfum de poussière, won Quebec’s Prix du Libraire. His second novel, Cockroach, was published in 2008 and has also been well received by both readers and critics.

De Niro’s Game (House of Anansi, 2006) tells the story of Bassam and George, two childhood friends caught in Lebanon's civil war. The teenagers must face their futures: stay in Beirut and consolidate power through crime; or go into exile abroad and be alienated from the only existence they have ever known. Bassam chooses one path: Obsessed with leaving Beirut, he embarks on a series of petty crimes to finance his departure. Meanwhile, George builds his power in the underworld of the city and embraces a life of military service, crime for profit, killing, and drugs.

Told in the voice of Bassam, De Niro's Game is a beautiful, explosive portrait of a contemporary young man shaped by a lifelong experience of war.

Rawi Hage brilliantly fuses vivid, jump-cut cinematic imagery with the measured strength and beauty of Arabic poetry. His style mimics a world gone mad: so smooth and apparently sane that its razor-sharp edges surprise and cut deeply. A powerful meditation on life and death in a war zone, where guns are often more prevalent than tap water, and what comes after. War is omnipresent and yet life goes on. While the novel is fiction, Hage has said that he related closely to the character of Bassam.

Praise has been plentiful for De Niro’s Game. “East meets West in this stunning first novel yielding a totally fresh perspective on war-torn Beirut. . . Both terse and lyrical, Hage's narrative is a wonder, alternately referencing modern American action heroes and ancient Arabic imagery. The blend of the two is as startling as it is beautiful.” (Booklist); “[A] masterpiece . . . writing cannot really get much better than Hage's.” (Literary Review of Canada); “The novel is full of poetic descriptions of the surreal and horrific nature of war delivered through Bassam's stream of consciousness narrative. There are lines that you are compelled to read again and again due to their raw beauty and their insight into how war irreparably shapes human psyches.” (Fast Forward Weekly).

Bombs were falling like monsoon rain in distant India.  I was desperate and restless, in need of a better job and money.  I worked at the port, where I drove the winch.  We emptied weapons from ships.  The weapons were stamped with Hebrew, English and Arabic serial numbers.  Some shipments had oil, and we had to hook them up to pipes in trucks.  Fruit came Turkey.  Seasick sheep with dripping noses and frightened sounds also came from Turkey.  We emptied it all. When the shipments contained weapons, militia jeeps surrounded the whole area.  The unloading was always done at night and no light was allowed, not even a cigarette.  After a night shift I would go home and sleep through the day.  My mother cooked and complained.  The few jobs I got at the port were not enough for cigarettes, a nagging mother and food.  Where to go, who to rob, con, beg, seduce, strip and touch?  I was sitting in my room, looking at a wall filled with foreign images, fading posters of teenage singers, blondes with shiny white teeth, Italian football players.  I thought, Roma must be a good place to walk freely.  The pigeons in the square look happy and well fed.
...

Ten thousand bombs had dropped like marbles on the kitchen floor and my mother was still cooking.  My father was still buried underground; only Christ had risen from the dead, so they say.   I was no longer expecting my father to show up at the door, quietly, calmly walking into the kitchen, sitting at that table, waiting for my mother to serve him salad and thin bread.  The dead do not come back.

Ten thousand bombs had made my ears whistle, but I still refused to go down to the shelter.

I have lost too many loved ones, my mother said to me. Come down to the shelter.

I did not go.

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