Daring novel portrays surreal life of terror in time of war

ANALYSIS: Lebanese Canadian wins with an important book that has something very shocking to say, writes Eileen Battersby.

ANALYSIS:Lebanese Canadian wins with an important book that has something very shocking to say, writes Eileen Battersby.

FOR THE second time in four years an Arab writer has won the International Impac Dublin Literary Award. Beirut born, Canadian citizen Rawi Hage's powerfully existentialist debut De Niro's Gameset in the hell of Beirut, yesterday emerged as this year's winner.

In a shortlist dominated by narratives sharing war as a central theme, Hage's novel more than any other conveyed the surreal terror of living with the constant threat of death by explosion in a civil war situation.

Since the announcement of the shortlist, this 13th Impac award was always going to be difficult to predict, unless one considered the single defining theme - today's world.

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The two novels set in the Middle East, Hage's book and Let It Be Morningby the Arab Israeli, Sayed Kashua, both reflected this and staked claims on what is the richest prize for a single work of fiction in the world.

Initially Ireland's Patrick McCabe with Winterwood, a tale of one man's life gone badly wrong, his finest book to date, had looked a strong favourite, particularly in the absence of surprise longlist fallers such as Martin Amis's House of Meetingsand Richard Ford's masterly The Lay of the Land.

Spaniard Javier Cercas, author of Soldiers of Salamis, was shortlisted for his fine second novel The Speed of Light, a good book but not an obvious winner.

The same applied to The Woman Who Waitedby the remarkable Siberian, Andreï Makine. This shortlist was about something else. Both Hage and Kashua are exploring the politics of the moment in places which remain virtual war zones.

Kashua's gentle, disarming narrative however never approaches the literary flamboyance of Hage's ambitious work which unfolds through the dense, acutely observed narrative of Bassam, a disengaged youth who is angry, clearly damaged and desperate to get out of Beirut.

The Lebanese capital as evoked by Hage is war-stricken, defeated and decadent; the young have become particularly feckless. Throughout the narrative Bassam describes his own actions and responses as if they are being enacted by someone else. This decision to enlist a convincingly non-heroic narrator who appears self-absorbed and indifferent to the politics, is ultimately one of the strengths of a daring novel which has been a bestseller in Canada as well as being shortlisted for every major prize, and winning most of them.

It is also highly visual, a quality honed by Hage's experience as a graphic artist which he discusses in an interview in today's arts page. Hage was the only one of the 11 Canadian writers longlisted, including Margaret Atwood, to make the final eight. His book is demanding, even strident and at times self-conscious.

Yet whereas Kashua, a journalist who writes from the beleaguered minority position of the Arab Israeli subject to suspicion of both Palestinian and Israeli, who gave his central character a similar job, kept his book low key and quite domestic - Hage allowed his narrator's personal turmoil to dictate the narrative pace which acquires the thrust of a thriller.

For all the war and politics, this was a quiet shortlist, overlooking the obvious such as Ford and Amis, and containing one time bomb - De Niro's Game. And the time bomb won. This year's win reiterates that Impac is the international literary prize to win. Most emphatically of all though, it shows how influential an international literary player Canada has become. It is a multi cultural society possessed of an interesting dualism, embracing English and French.

It has also produced some of the finest short story writers of all such as Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant and Alistair MacLeod, the 2001 Impac winner with No Great Mischief.

Anglo Canadian writers specialise in making art out of the ordinary, adopting a slightly more low key approach to domestic realism than their US neighbours.

There is a further dimension to Canadian writing and that is the impressive influx of talent from elsewhere - India, the Middle East, central and eastern Europe; writers such as Rohinton Mistry and Michael Ondaatje. So a Lebanese Canadian has won with an important book that aspires to high art and has something very shocking to say.