Guapa

April 11, 2016
Family, identity, and politics collide in Haddad's debut. Rasa is an American-educated young man living in an unnamed Arab country. Disenchanted with the failed revolution of a few months prior and tired of his work translating for foreign journalists and businesses, Rasa finds hope and comfort in the arms of his lover, Taymour. However, one morning Rasa's grandmother Teta discovers him and Taymour in bed together: "There is everything that has ever happened, and then there is this morning." The tumultuous day takes Rasa from his grandmother's apartment, to slums to interview Islamist rebels; to a police station to bail out his best friend, activist and drag queen Maj; to the underground gay bar Guapa; and eventually to Taymour's lavish wedding to a woman. Throughout the novel, episodes from Rasa's past bleed into the narrative. Much as Teta spied on him and Taymour through a keyhole, Rasa examines his inadequate memories, trying to understand how everything fits together and how he can build a future, with or without the man he loves. It's a puzzling choice for Haddad to keep the setting unnamed. During America's post-9/11 bombing campaigns, Rasa thinks, "The city... had become shorthand to describe an event. The country that once existed was no more." That pattern is perpetuated here, but for whose benefit? Haddad, a former aid worker and consultant, navigates Rasa's interior and exterior worlds with empathy and care. The topic of gay life in the Arab world is richly complex, and Haddad's cinematic, evocative prose rises to meet the sensitive subject matter.

January 1, 2016
In an unnamed Middle Eastern country, a young translator deals with the fallout after his grandmother catches him with another man. Set against the backdrop of a country on the brink of civil war, Haddad's debut novel follows a young gay man, Rasa, over a tense 24 hours. First his grandmother catches him in bed with his lover, then his best friend is arrested at a gay cinema. As Rasa grapples with these conflicts, he also remembers his past--from his sexual awakening to his four years in America for college to experiences at his one refuge, the neighborhood bar/underground gay club that gives the novel its title. Rasa, introspective and witty, makes a sympathetic narrator, and the story is filled with moments of heartbreak and tension (a loaded scene involving Rasa, the Western journalist he translates for, and a husband-wife team of Islamic revolutionaries is especially well-done). But a certain coyness pervades the narrative, at times distracting from an otherwise absorbing story. For a novel so much about place and politics, Haddad's decision not to identify the Arab country where the bulk of the narrative is set, nor the American city where Rasa studies, is difficult to understand. It also leads to some clunky phrasing: a woman wears a T-shirt "which has the name of the college I went to in America," etc. More frustrating, at times Haddad seems so bent on saving the major confrontations for novel's end that early sections become bogged down in bouts of interior monologue. Still, readers will find no shortage of characters they'll want to spend time with, and a dramatic wedding scene at the end makes up for earlier missteps. Those looking for a nuanced portrait of gay life in the modern Middle East will find plenty to admire in this flawed but promising debut.

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March 1, 2016

The titular Guapa is a dive bar in an unnamed city in the Middle East that has the feel of present-day Cairo. Guapa offers its habitues an escape from the watchful eye of a hard-line regime. Protagonist Rasa, a young, educated (in America) gay man, is a visitor to the underground club, where he meets friends and his lover, Taymour. At the start of this affecting novel, Rasa's indomitable grandmother Teta, with whom he's lived since the death of his father and the disappearance of his mother, discovers him and Taymour in flagrante delicto in Rasa's room. This threatens to end his relations with Taymour, and for the rest of the novel Rasa attempts to patch things up with his lover while wondering about his existence as a gay man in a traditional society. Haddad, born in Kuwait City of a Lebanese Palestinian father and an Iraqi German mother and now residing in London, has served as an aid worker for Doctors Without Borders in several Middle Eastern countries. Here he opens a window onto a man coming to terms with his sexuality in a repressive society during the recent upheavals in the Arab world. VERDICT Warmly recommended to all readers who are interested in issues of diversity and the Middle East.--Edward B. Cone, New York

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2016
Rasa is an outsider, a gay man coming of age in a time and place in turmoil. The chaos outside reflects the uncertainty in his own mind. He questions his sexuality as much as he frets about the future of his unnamed Arab country (given Haddad's experience with the Arab Spring, it is likely that he's fictionalizing Egypt) in the aftermath of a revolution. Haddad is a fine writer who in his first novel has created characters we care about. Rasa, an interpreter for Western journalists, has his world turned upside down when his grandmother catches him in bed with his lover. Rasa is wracked with guilt and conflict as he continues to try to keep his secret life under wraps even while frequenting Guapa, an underground bar and the only place where he feels safe, and listening to pop singer George Michael, who guides Rasa's rising sense of self. Haddad presents a striking look at gay life, the psychological cost of conformity, and what it means to be true to yourself from a Middle Eastern perspective.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)