De Niro's Game

WINNER OF THE 2008 INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY PRIZE

De Niro’s Game plunges readers into the timely story of two young men caught in Lebanon’s civil war. Bassam and George, best friends in childhood, have grown to adulthood in war-torn Beirut. Now they must choose their futures: to stay in the city and consolidate power through crime, or to go into exile abroad, alienated from the only existence they have known. Told in a distinctive, captivating voice that fuses vivid cinematic imagery and page-turning plot with the measured strength and beauty of Arabic poetry, De Niro’s Game is an explosive portrait of life in a war zone, and a powerful meditation on what comes after.

" This aggressive, prize-winning Canadian import debut recounts the fate of two childhood friends in war-ravaged Beirut. Hage's energetic prose matches the brutality depicted in the novel without overstating the narrative's tragic arc - an impressive first outing for Hage." "-- starred review Publishers Weekly
" "East meets West in this stunning first novel yielding a totally fresh perspective on war-torn Beirut. Both terse and lyrical, Hage's narrative is a wonder, alternately referencing modern American action heroes and ancient Arabic imagery. The blend of the two is as startling as it is beautiful."
-- s"tarred review Booklist"

& quot; This aggressive, prize-winning Canadian import debut recounts the fate of two childhood friends in war-ravaged Beirut. Hage's energetic prose matches the brutality depicted in the novel without overstating the narrative's tragic arc - an impressive first outing for Hage.& quot; -- starred review Publishers Weekly
& quot; East meets West in this stunning first novel yielding a totally fresh perspective on war-torn Beirut. Both terse and lyrical, Hage's narrative is a wonder, alternately referencing modern American action heroes and ancient Arabic imagery. The blend of the two is as startling as it is beautiful.& quot;
-- s tarred review Booklist

"In the rough, intense "De Niro's Game", debut novelist Rawi Hage's native Beirut circa 1982 is soaked in history. The civil war's horrors, which include torture, maimed dogs, and the titular Russian roulette (George's nickname is De Niro: think "Deer Hunter") are palpably drawn, as is the tragedy of adolescent innocence run aground. Hage's style is hallucinatory, and as you read and reread his gorgeous, grandiose, melancholy catalogs of destruction, you'll find it hard not to think of the fevered dream of "Howl". But Hage tempers his poetry with an acerbic tone that perhaps comes from having survived hell on earth."
--"The Village Voice"
"This aggressive, prize-winning Canadian import debut recounts the fate of two childhood friends in war-ravaged Beirut. Hage's energetic prose matches the brutality depicted in the novel without overstating the narrative's tragic arc - an impressive first outing for Hage." "-- starred review Publishers Weekly
""East meets West in this stunning first novel yielding a totally fresh perspective on war-torn Beirut. Both terse and lyrical, Hage's narrative is a wonder, alternately referencing modern American action heroes and ancient Arabic imagery. The blend of the two is as startling as it is beautiful."
-- s"tarred review Booklist"

""De Niro's Game" is the most subtly nuanced, psychologically compelling book about the corrosive effects of war to have been written for a long time." "-- The Financial Times"
"Canadian writer Rawi Hage grew up in Beirut during the late '70s and early '80s, a time when the relentless bombing and geopolitical gamesmanship attendant with Lebanon's civil war made the word "Beirut" a kind of shorthand for pointless urban destruction. In his first novel, De Niro's Game, Hage uses his native city as a canvas on which he paints a gorgeous and revolting portrait of living with war. His subject is fascinating, but more compelling is how he carves out a writing style that mixes modern Mideast horrors with American movie imagery and Arabic poetic tradition. De Niro's Game is the story of Bassam and his friend George, two young men coming of age during Beirut's war years. Bombs drop around them like rain, and honest work is useless. For money and entertainment, the two dig up trouble and scams. "War is for thugs, " Bassam says. "Motorcycles are also for thugs, and for longhaired teenagers like us, with guns under our bellies, and stolen gas in our tanks, and no particular place to go." Seen through Bassam's eyes, the Christian militia that George joins is not a political movement, just an escalation in thuggery. As his friend is drawn deeper into the crimes of war, Bassam desperately seeks escape. The tragic arc of the novel--its title refers to Russian roulette asplayed in the movie The Deer Hunter--is a given, of course. But Hage uses Bassam's inevitably hopeless fate to free the story from the moorings of plot and outcome and instead revels in the poetry of language. Hage's prose is at once starkly realistic yet thrillingly alive with dark fancy, as if Kahlil Gibran smoked hash with Hunter S. Thompson, stumbled bleary-eyed through the city, and freestyled for whomever might care.... Critics rightly acclaimed De Niro's Game when it was published in Canada last year. But what it's about--harsh life amid urban warfare--wrongly overshadows what it is--a soaring, lyrical triumph. Hage is surely unloading autobiographical sensations from his homeland. But this novel isn't reportage; it's troubling and transcendent art."
--" Washington City Paper"
"In the rough, intense "De Niro's Game", debut novelist Rawi Hage's native Beirut circa 1982 is soaked in history. The civil war's horrors, which include torture, maimed dogs, and the titular Russian roulette (George's nickname is De Niro: think "Deer Hunter") are palpably drawn, as is the tragedy of adolescent innocence run aground. Hage's style is hallucinatory, and as you read and reread his gorgeous, grandiose, melancholy catalogs of destruction, you'll find it hard not to think of the fevered dream of "Howl". But Hage tempers his poetry with an acerbic tone that perhaps comes from having survived hell on earth."
--"The VillageVoice"
"This aggressive, prize-winning Canadian import debut recounts the fate of two childhood friends in war-ravaged Beirut. Hage's energetic prose matches the brutality depicted in the novel without overstating the narrative's tragic arc - an impressive first outing for Hage." "-- starred review Publishers Weekly
""East meets West in this stunning first novel yielding a totally fresh perspective on war-torn Beirut. Both terse and lyrical, Hage's narrative is a wonder, alternately referencing modern American action heroes and ancient Arabic imagery. The blend of the two is as startling as it is beautiful."
-- s"tarred review Booklist"

" Hage brilliantly condenses these short, incendiary lives: while the setting is relatively contemporary, the conflict and language are centuries old."
--" The Guardian"
""De Niro's Game" does for Christian East Beirut what Ziad Doueiri's much-acclaimed film West Beirut did for the predominantly Muslim half of the Lebanese capital. . . . Hage eerily conjures up the paralytic terror experienced by densely populated neighborhoods when pummeled by indiscriminate shelling. . . [and] skillfully evokes the contradictions of Lebanese culture and the madness of wartime Beirut through arresting visual imagery and a sensitive probing of communal sentiment. Haunting descriptions of Armenians who survived the 1915 Turkish massacres and found refuge in Lebanon, passing references to neighborhoods populated by Syriacs and one character's stark reminder that Christians in Lebanon should remain vigilant lest they end up like their counterparts in Egypt all provide readers with a glimpse into the siege mentality of East Beirut." -- "Miami Herald"

""De Niro's Game" is the most subtly nuanced, psychologically compelling book about the corrosive effects of war to have been written for a long time." "-- The Financial Times"
"Canadian writer Rawi Hage grew up in Beirut during the late '70s and early '80s, a time when the relentless bombing and geopolitical gamesmanship attendant with Lebanon's civil war made the word"Beirut" a kind of shorthand for pointless urban destruction. In his first novel, De Niro's Game, Hage uses his native city as a canvas on which he paints a gorgeous and revolting portrait of living with war. His subject is fascinating, but more compelling is how he carves out a writing style that mixes modern Mideast horrors with American movie imagery and Arabic poetic tradition. De Niro's Game is the story of Bassam and his friend George, two young men coming of age during Beirut's war years. Bombs drop around them like rain, and honest work is useless. For money and entertainment, the two dig up trouble and scams. "War is for thugs, " Bassam says. "Motorcycles are also for thugs, and for longhaired teenagers like us, with guns under our bellies, and stolen gas in our tanks, and no particular place to go." Seen through Bassam's eyes, the Christian militia that George joins is not a political movement, just an escalation in thuggery. As his friend is drawn deeper into the crimes of war, Bassam desperately seeks escape. The tragic arc of the novel--its title refers to Russian roulette as played in the movie The Deer Hunter--is a given, of course. But Hage uses Bassam's inevitably hopeless fate to free the story from the moorings of plot and outcome and instead revels in the poetry of language. Hage's prose is at once starkly realistic yet thrillingly alive with dark fancy, as if Kahlil Gibran smoked hash with Hunter S. Thompson, stumbled bleary-eyed through the city, and freestyled for whomever might care.... Critics rightly acclaimed DeNiro's Game when it was published in Canada last year. But what it's about--harsh life amid urban warfare--wrongly overshadows what it is--a soaring, lyrical triumph. Hage is surely unloading autobiographical sensations from his homeland. But this novel isn't reportage; it's troubling and transcendent art."
--" Washington City Paper"
"In the rough, intense "De Niro's Game", debut novelist Rawi Hage's native Beirut circa 1982 is soaked in history. The civil war's horrors, which include torture, maimed dogs, and the titular Russian roulette (George's nickname is De Niro: think "Deer Hunter") are palpably drawn, as is the tragedy of adolescent innocence run aground. Hage's style is hallucinatory, and as you read and reread his gorgeous, grandiose, melancholy catalogs of destruction, you'll find it hard not to think of the fevered dream of "Howl". But Hage tempers his poetry with an acerbic tone that perhaps comes from having survived hell on earth."
--"The Village Voice"
"This aggressive, prize-winning Canadian import debut recounts the fate of two childhood friends in war-ravaged Beirut. Hage's energetic prose matches the brutality depicted in the novel without overstating the narrative's tragic arc - an impressive first outing for Hage." "-- starred review Publishers Weekly

""East meets West in this stunning first novel yielding a totally fresh perspectiveon war-torn Beirut. Both terse and lyrical, Hage's narrative is a wonder, alternately referencing modern American action heroes and ancient Arabic imagery. The blend of the two is as startling as it is beautiful."
-- s"tarred review Booklist"

"In a shattering vision of the eternal return, Rawi Hage takes us back to a point in recent memory when it was not Iraq but Lebanon that burned in the hellfire of war, as foreign bombs rained destruction from above while fratricidal terrorism reigned in the streets; a time when not Baghdad but Beirut was shorthand for the utter and awful collapse of civilization into savagery.
"De Niro's Game," Hage's gripping first novel, tracks the fortunes of two young friends, Bassam and George, Beirut Christians trying to survive in this cauldron of brutality and terror. The only choices they see are to join the fighting, to make a break for exile, or to become - they embrace the term - thugs, living off threats, bravado, and whatever they can steal...
Hage, himself a Lebanese refugee now living in Canada, brings a fierce poetic originality to a tragically familiar story, evoking Bassam's psychological disintegration in a downpour of hallucinatory imagery: Hollywood noir meets opium dreams in a blasted landscape of war-wasted young lives."
--" The Boston Globe"
" Hage brilliantly condenses these short, incendiary lives: while the setting is relatively contemporary, the conflict and language are centuries old."
--" The Guardian"
""De Niro's Game" does for Christian East Beirut what Ziad Doueiri's much-acclaimed film West Beirut did for the predominantly Muslim half of the Lebanese capital. . . . Hage eerily conjures up the paralytic terror experienced by densely populated neighborhoods when pummeled by indiscriminate shelling. . . [and] skillfully evokes the contradictions of Lebanese culture and the madness of wartime Beirut through arresting visual imagery and a sensitiveprobing of communal sentiment. Haunting descriptions of Armenians who survived the 1915 Turkish massacres and found refuge in Lebanon, passing references to neighborhoods populated by Syriacs and one character's stark reminder that Christians in Lebanon should remain vigilant lest they end up like their counterparts in Egypt all provide readers with a glimpse into the siege mentality of East Beirut." -- "Miami Herald"

""De Niro's Game" is the most subtly nuanced, psychologically compelling book about the corrosive effects of war to have been written for a long time." "-- The Financial Times"
"Canadian writer Rawi Hage grew up in Beirut during the late '70s and early '80s, a time when the relentless bombing and geopolitical gamesmanship attendant with Lebanon's civil war made the word "Beirut" a kind of shorthand for pointless urban destruction. In his first novel, De Niro's Game, Hage uses his native city as a canvas on which he paints a gorgeous and revolting portrait of living with war. His subject is fascinating, but more compelling is how he carves out a writing style that mixes modern Mideast horrors with American movie imagery and Arabic poetic tradition. De Niro's Game is the story of Bassam and his friend George, two young men coming of age during Beirut's war years. Bombs drop around them like rain, and honest work is useless. For money and entertainment, the two dig up trouble and scams. "War is for thugs," Bassam says. "Motorcycles are also for thugs, and for longhaired teenagers like us, with guns under our bellies, and stolen gas in our tanks, and no particular place to go." Seen through Bassam's eyes, the Christian militia that George joins is not a politicalmovement, just an escalation in thuggery. As his friend is drawn deeper into the crimes of war, Bassam desperately seeks escape. The tragic arc of the novel--its title refers to Russian roulette as played in the movie The Deer Hunter--is a given, of course. But Hage uses Bassam's inevitably hopeless fate to free the story from the moorings of plot and outcome and instead revels in the poetry of language. Hage's prose is at once starkly realistic yet thrillingly alive with dark fancy, as if Kahlil Gibran smoked hash with Hunter S. Thompson, stumbled bleary-eyed through the city, and freestyled for whomever might care.... Critics rightly acclaimed De Niro's Game when it was published in Canada last year. But what it's about--harsh life amid urban warfare--wrongly overshadows what it is--a soaring, lyrical triumph. Hage is surely unloading autobiographical sensations from his homeland. But this novel isn't reportage; it's troubling and transcendent art."
--" Washington City Paper"
"In the rough, intense "De Niro's Game," debut novelist Rawi Hage's native Beirut circa 1982 is soaked in history. The civil war's horrors, which include torture, maimed dogs, and the titular Russ...