Koolaids: The Art of War (Paperback)

by Rabih Alameddine (Author) "Death comes in many shapes and sizes, but it always comes..." (more)
Key Phrases: horsemen approach, little tag, East Beirut, San Francisco, West Beirut (more...)

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1st edition (July 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312206585
• ISBN-13: 978-0312206581
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #113,110 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars what style! i cannot stop, i want to because it is so sad, October 21, 1999

By A Customer

clever. i am involved, i want to stop because there is just too much to deal with in those pages, my eyes are constantly filling with tears, but i cannot. beirut is a city i love, and death is something i do not like. and i cannot understand how cruel, simply cruel, living can be. i just wish deeply that the wirter does not have aids, it would be painful. yes, from a very egocentric personal point of view. sorry. war, death, aids, being gay, all are personal stuff.

2 of 2 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 (REAL NAME)

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.

2 of 2 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.