Koolaids: The Art of War [Hardcover]

Rabih Alameddine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1998

An extraordinary literary debut, this book is about the AIDS epidemic, the civil war in Beirut, death, sex, and the meaning of life. Daring in form as well as content, Koolaids turns the traditional novel inside out and hangs it on the clothesline to air.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Alameddine is a respected painter who brings great visual skill to his first literary work. The novel is really an effectively conceived collage of the viewpoints of several characters: Samia is a Lebanese woman crisscrossing east and west Beirut during its darkest days, Mark is an HIV-positive American who faces his own end while mourning the steady loss of friends during the worst years of the AIDS plague, and Mohammed is a belligerent and misunderstood painter who tries to give form and meaning to it all, just as the author means to do through his fiction. War, death, sex in a morally empty and meaningless world?when mixed on Alameddine's palette, they make for fascinating reading. To make his point, Alameddine freely cites thinkers whose takes on life and death he finds laughably wanting. He also includes news reports which, when juxtaposed with the situations of his characters, makes us see by just how far those not living the horror can miss the truth. Immediate, pitched, and frightening to read, this work is recommended for larger public and academic libraries.?Roger W. Durbin, Univ. of Akron, OH
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

This emotionally charged first novel by a Lebanese-American writer and artist is an impressionistic collage that skillfully juxtaposes its gay protagonists' defiant encounters with AIDS, the embattled recent history of Lebanon during its own civil war and ``the Israeli siege of Beirut,'' and more general permutations of estrangement from society, family, and nation. Alameddine's characters (who are, unfortunately, not always clearly distinguished) include a Lebanese matriarch whose diary records the sufferings of her kindred throughout a 30-year span of political turmoil, several variously involved San Franciscans during that city's own plague years, andmost cruciallya painter whose garishly violent canvases are calculated distortions of his Lebanese homeland's chaotic past and present. The ``novel'' assembles summaries of that history together with journal excerpts, letters, poems, discursive statements often framed as aphorisms (``in America, I fit, but I do not belong. In Lebanon, I belong, but I do not fit''), and aborted literary works. If we're occasionally unsure whos speaking (or being addressed), there's no mistaking the books furious argumentative energy here--whether its scattershot wit takes the form of mocking allusions to the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; a rudely satirical playlet whose characters include Eleanor Roosevelt, Krishnamurti, Julio Cortazr, and (a probably gay) Tom Cruise; imaginary conversations with eminent writers (Borges, Coover, and Updike among them); or parodies whose subjects range from Middle Eastern scriptures to American movies and TV shows (one of The Waltons is particularly droll). Alameddine stumbles when fulminating nakedly against American materialism and heterosexual hypocrisy--yet some of his baldest declarations are among his finer effects (for example, an HIV-positive protagonist's lament that ``nothing in my life is up to me''). A wildly uneven, but powerful and original portrayal of cultural and sexual displacement, alienation, and--in its admirably gritty way--pride. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1st edition (April 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312186932
• ISBN-13: 978-0312186937
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,080,732 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Original and insightful novel., April 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Koolaids: The Art of War (Hardcover)

For any gay man who participated in gay/queer communities in the late 1980's, reading "Koolaids" will be like experiencing a long, accurate and precise memory of those furious and painful times (details of life during the epidemic are interspersed with vignettes about war-era Beirut. Trust me - it works.)
"Koolaids" is not just a good book. It is angry (Remember when people were angry? Ah, what a lark!), funny, queer and smart. It is original. Many previous AIDS memoirs/fictions have been precious accounts of loss, sweaters and Paris. Really. If you pick up the three most famous gay male memoirs about AIDS, you will read as much about France and good cheese and fine wine as you will about loss and disease. These books say more about the authors' sartorial and gastronomic preferences than about the epidemic or the times. "Koolaids", on the other hand, reminds us of the uses of anger and grief, and of what the virus did to individuals, communities and a nation. By returning the reader to a wholly different era, "Koolaids" makes history.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars buy this book, July 1, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Koolaids: The Art of War (Paperback)

This book is brilliant, able to be humorous and entertaining even as it takes you into some of the darkest moments of our time. The juxtaposition of the AIDS crisis in America and the War in Lebanon is an effective choice, it creates a new perspective to two very emotionally difficult and recent parts of our history that we are still collectively coming to terms with. as a gay lebanese-american i found the voices of Alameddine's characters to be particularly haunting. Mr. Alameddine is an exciting and daring writer and I anxiously anticipate his new works while re-reading his currently published books.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting juxtapositions, January 19, 2000

By 

R. Aldrich (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Koolaids: The Art of War (Paperback)

Coming from a Lebanese-American family and living in Washington, I was interested in what Alemeddine was putting together in this book. Although it took me some time to touch each narrative to its central character -- there're quite a few central characters here -- I found the treatment of their separate but eerily similar situations sensitive and sensual. This is definitely worth reading, and I would hope that more English-speaking Lebanese and Lebanese-American writers come forth with valuable works.