True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)

''Relentlessly funny'' The New Yorker ''Darkly comic . . . I loved it'' The Guardian From the inimitable Rabih Alameddine - winner of the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award - comes a tragicomic saga set in Lebanon, a modern story of family, memory, and the unbreakable (and insane) attachment of a son and his mother. In a tiny Beirut apartment, sixty-three-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and ''the neighborhood homosexual,'' Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son''s privacy as a personal affront. She craves nothing more than to know the ins and outs of Raja''s work life and love life, boundaries be damned. When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing