Cockroach

Description:
Our unnamed narrator has left his Middle-Eastern home and settled in a chilly, western city. He lives as an exile, untrusted, unwanted, foreign. A stranger trying to make sense of a strange land. But he brings with him secrets - of a family tragedy that he failed to prevent and a childhood overshadowed by war. And as he wanders snowy streets, falling in love with fellow exile Shoreh, he realizes that to find a place in this alien world it is necessary to become someone else. Someone he never dared to be in his past life.

Review:
Gripping. A humane and compassionate storyteller New Statesman Beautifully paced, filled with picaresque wit and misadventure, anchored by a dark and uncompromising vision ... Rawi Hage has joined the great pantheon of Canadian writers whose work we read with admiration and excitement -- Colm Toibin Compelling, intriguing, deceptive Financial Times Further evidence of Hage's large and unsettling talent Guardian

Prizes:
Winner of Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction 2008.
Shortlisted for Scotiabank Giller Prize 2008.
Shortlisted for Roger Writers' Trust Fiction Prize 2008.

Author Biography:
Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war during the 1970s and 1980s. He emigrated to Canada in 1992 and now lives in Montreal. His first novel, De Niro's Game, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for the best English-language book published anywhere in the world in a given year, and has either won or been shortlisted for seven other major awards and prizes. Cockroach was the winner of the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Awards. It was also shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize.