The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)

De: Rabih Alameddine

Narrado por: GM Hakim

“Alameddine is a writer with a boundless imagination.” —NPR

From National Book Award finalist and winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction comes a tragicomic love story set in Lebanon, a modern saga of family, memory, and the unbreakable attachment of a son and his mother.

In a tiny Beirut apartment, sixty-three-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and “the neighborhood homosexual,” Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son’s desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail of Raja’s work life and love life, boundaries be damned.

When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn’t be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja longing for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget.

Told in Raja’s irresistible and wickedly funny voice, the novel dances across six decades to tell the unforgettable story of a singular life and its absurdities—a tale of mistakes, self-discovery, trauma, and maybe even forgiveness. Above all, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) is a wildly unique and sparkling celebration of love.

Just a great book!

I got this book because it won the national book award for this year. It is a funny, sad, historical, view on the human existence told from 1 man's perspective taking place in Beirut Lebanon. The book is witty, real, and full of feelings. It addresses screwed up family dynamics, as well as life under a corrupt unstable government, including experiencing life with war lords, local malicious, shortages of food, electric, and all the things we take for granted. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone.

The voices and how well they revealed the characters

What a ride! How life could switch from a familiar chaos to terror in an instant was well done.

Must read!

Gorgeous book. Loved Raja’s voice - ended too soon. Wondered why he made the choices he made.

Another lovely book by Rabih

The narrator is great and the story is engaging and poignant. I highly recommend this book.

A Mother’s Love

Just like in life, while you’re doing it, you don’t really know what’s happening, and you really only get a sense of it in looking back… This is the story of a gay man living in Lebanon for the last many decades, his trials and tribulations. And meanwhile, as you’re listening to his story, often funny, sometimes tragic, his mother is weaving a network around his students and friends, which proves to be as strong as he is gullible.