Lebanese-American writer Rabih Alameddine is the author of The Hakawati (The Storyteller), a 2008 international best-seller. His fourth novel, An Unnecessary Woman, was published this week by Grove Atlantic.
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa (Penguin, $19). The narrator of my new novel translates works of literature into Arabic, including all six of these books. Disquiet is her favorite. What makes this fictional diary transcendent is that it deals with eternal quests, everything from the meaning of life and of death to deciphering the soul’s disquiet. It can quench a thirsty mind and flood an arid heart.
Sepharad by Antonio Muñoz Molina (Harvest, $22). I have read each of the books on this list at least three times, and I mentioned this because Sepharad continues to dazzle in a peculiar way. Every time I read this novel on the Sephardic Jewish diaspora, I feel I am doing so for the first time. It is a book of longing.
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