Cockroach

by Rawi Hage

Hamish Hamilton, Penguin, 2009, ISBN 9780241144480, paperback

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, no inscriptions, remainder line at bottom fore edge, un-creased spine, (see photographs)

“During a bitterly cold winter in a snowy northern city, a self-confessed thief has just tried to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree in the local park.  Rescued against his will and obliged to attend sessions with a well-meaning but naïve therapist, our narrator, an immigrant from a sunny Arab country, tells her – and us – his heart-rending and sometimes hallucinatory story.
Leading us back into his childhood in a war-torn country and forward into his current life in the smoky émigré cafes of his new city, Cockroach traces, with lyricism and dark humour, our narrator’s journey, his longing for a place in the world, his guilt over his sister’s death at the hands of her husband, and his love for an Iranian woman, Shoreh, whose life is also a flight from the darkness of the past.”