Rabih Alameddine recieves 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Posted in Announcements
Lannan Visiting Chair Rabih Alameddine’s The Wrong End of the Telescope (Grove Atlantic) has been selected as the winner of the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
“Impassioned and remarkably constructed, Rabih Alameddine’s The Wrong End of the Telescope takes us into the life of a transgender Lebanese-American doctor, Mina, working in Lesbos at a refugee camp for Syrians,” said this year’s judges. “Alameddine makes original use of second-person narration, positioning Mina against a ‘you’ character who, though a veteran collector of refugee stories, is overcome by his experiences in Lesbos. Putting no moral gloss on its subjects, and infused with the gravitas of a fittingly Greek mythos, this novel explores the complexities of the refugees’ lives and the intricacies of Mina’s relationships, examines the many angles of a timely and vital subject, and probes the life-changing choices humans are forced to make. The exquisite language suspends time and investigates the intricacies of seeking refuge, both from geo-political disruptions and from one’s own patterns of life. In a year of stunning and important fiction, this work stands as a particular achievement: a novel that cries out to be heard and that teaches us, both intrinsically and extrinsically, what story can do.”