An Unnecessary Woman

A happily misanthropic Middle East divorcee finds refuge in books in a novel of late-life crisis. Aaliya is a divorced, childless, and reclusively cranky translator in Beirut nurturing doubts about her latest project: a 900-page avant-garde, linguistically serpentine historiography by a late Chilean existentialist. Honestly, at seventy-two, should she be taking on such a project?

Not that Aaliya fears dying. Women in her family live long; her mother is still going crazy. But on this lonely day, hour-by-hour, Aaliya's musings on literature, philosophy, her career, and her aging body, are suddenly invaded by memories of her volatile past. As she tries in vain to ward off these emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left.

This is a meditation on, among other things, aging, politics, literature, loneliness, grief and resilience. Alameddine conjures a beguiling narrator who is, like her city, hard to read, hard to take, hard to know and, ultimately, passionately complex. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, An Unnecessary Woman is a fun, and often funny, grave, powerful, and extraordinary ode to literature and its power to define who we are.