Tuesday, 13 August 2019

The Angel of History by Rabih Alameddine



This is a complex novel but deeply touching.

It sits is a similar context to Armistead Maupin’s tales from the city, set mostly within the gay community of the west coast of the USA devastated by the first wave of AIDS.

There was also an echo of Ece Temelkuran’s Women Who Blow on Knots – with mysticism and fantasy, but also because Jacob as an Arab Christian and a non-White gay man has a status of a minority within a minority.

It is funny, on played for laughs and one-liners, but there is a humour in a recurring sense of ridiculous.

It is deeply painful, the way loss is written so clearly – love lost, love that maybe wasn’t so perfect in the first place – it perhaps asks the question does losing imperfect love actually hurt a little harder that losing a perfect love would?

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