At the 76th National Book Awards ceremony in New York, Lebanese-American novelist Rabih Alameddine won the fiction prize for his book "The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)." (Photo: AFP)
In New York, the 76th National Book Awards ceremony honored Lebanese-American novelist Rabih Alameddine as winner of the fiction prize for The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and his Mother) published by Grove Press. It was an evening where literary celebration and political commentary came hand-in-hand.
Hailed as one of his most ambitious works yet, Alameddine delivers a novel that interweaves family drama, philosophical questioning, and a portrait of contemporary Lebanon.
The story follows Raja, a philosophy professor, through his complex relationship with his aging mother, spanning six decades of upheaval, from the Lebanese Civil War to the most recent economic collapse.
The judges praised "a rare narrative richness," where layered storytelling, dark humor, family memory and compassion create a vivid portrait of the country. Since its release, the book has been regarded as a major event of the American literary season.
During his speech, Alameddine offered a moment where seriousness and irony came together: denouncing violence against migrants in the U.S., referencing the war on Gaza.
“This morning I saw two videos,” he said. “One was of an ICE agent. The woman was on the asphalt, zip-tied. He came over and zapped her, and then carried her like garbage and threw her in the back of the SUV.”
The second video, he continued, showed “a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon that was bombed and 12 people died. And I kept thinking: they make a desolation and call it a cease-fire. Sometimes, as writers, we have to say: enough.”
His speech was also marked by tongue-in-cheek gratitude to his agent, his doctors and his psychiatrist who he said "has been trying for twenty years to bring me back down to earth."
This new accolade adds to an already extensively awarded career. An internationally recognized author, Alameddine won the 2016 Prix Femina for foreign fiction for An Unnecessary Woman (Les Escales), as well as the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Wrong End of the Telescope (Corsair).
He is also a Guggenheim Fellow, confirming his status as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary transnational literature.
Honored authors
The non-fiction prize went to Egyptian-Canadian Omar al-Akkad for One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Canongate), a sharp investigation into Western involvement in the war on Gaza. "It's hard to celebrate a book born of genocide," he said, reflecting on two years of reporting in the field.
In poetry, Patricia Smith was recognized for The Intentions of Thunder (Bloodaxe Books), a powerful collection on the Black American experience. The translated literature category honored Gabriela Cabezón Cámara for We Are Green and Trembling (New Directions Publishing), translated from Spanish by Robin Myers. Finally, Daniel Nayeri won the youth literature prize for The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story.
Each winner received a $10,000 award.
Held at Cipriani Wall Street, the evening featured speeches marked by concern: immigration, police violence, war in the Middle East, American social divides. The writers turned the ceremony into a platform.
Honorary awards went to two major figures: George Saunders, lauded for his humanism and satirical sharpness, and Roxane Gay, for her role in promoting voices long marginalized.
Saunders reminded the audience that literature remains "an exercise in truth," while Gay urged the publishing industry to abandon "outdated criteria like follower counts."
By honoring Rabih Alameddine, the National Book Awards celebrate literature of the diaspora, transnational and fully engaged. Born in Amman, raised between Kuwait and Lebanon, now living in the United States, the author of The Hakawati and An Unnecessary Woman continues to produce works where memory, queer identity, exile and collective trauma travel across borders.
This article originally appeared in French on L'Orient-Le Jour.
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