National Book Award Winner for Fiction

Rabih Alameddine‘s most recent book is the acclaimed novel The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (And His Mother), winner of the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction, which Publishers Weekly called “a ravishing performance.” His other books include Comforting Myths: Concerning the Political in Art (2024), and six critically acclaimed novels, including The Wrong End of the Telescope (2021), winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award; The Angel of History (2016); An Unnecessary Woman (2014), finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, winner of the California Book Award, and a Washington Post, Kirkus, and NPR Best Book of 2014; The Hakawati (2008); I, The Divine (2001); and Koolaids (1998). He is also the author of a book of short stories, The Perv (1999). Alameddine received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002.

Born in Amman, Jordan, Alameddine grew up in Lebanon and Kuwait, lived in England, then moved to the United States. He earned a degree in Engineering from UCLA and an MBA in San Francisco before becoming a painter and novelist. He divides his time between Beirut and San Francisco.

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