WORLD CLASS: In this tightly curated book, we see one of our country’s world-class fiction talents giving a master class about the world itself: each story takes us to a different city and location around the globe. Hage seamlessly inhabits these people and places, always from the sharp perspective of outsiders of one kind or another.

MID-CAREER FRESH: Over his four extraordinary novels, Hage has built an enviable and lasting body of work that has changed Canadian literature. He is also published, read and celebrated around the world. As a native of embattled Beirut, he brings a cosmopolitan, tragic, politically astute, historically aware perspective—qualities that bring startling freshness and liveliness to this new (for Rawi) form of stories.

SNAPSHOTS: Rawi studied photography, and worked as a photographer before turning to writing. These stories, more than any of his previous work, have the qualities of startling snapshots, and give space and scope for his incredible visual sense as he imagines his characters in different settings around the world.

RAWI HAGE was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of the Lebanese Civil War during the 1970s and 1980s. He immigrated to Canada in 1992 and now lives in Montreal. His first novel, De Niro’s Game, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for the best English-language book published anywhere in the world in a given year, and has either won or been shortlisted for seven other major awards and prizes, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award. Cockroach was the winner of the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Award. His third novel, Carnival, told from the perspective of a taxi driver, was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Award and won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. And his most recent novel, Beirut Hellfire Society, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His work has been translated into thirty languages.

Author Residence: Montreal, Canada

Author Hometown: Beirut, Lebanon

FINALIST FOR THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE

“It’s stray humans…who actually abound in this superb collection. In a genre perfectly suited to Hage’s elliptical and hypnotic style, the acclaimed Montreal novelist moves his settings around a world now inclined to closing both borders and minds.” —Maclean’s

“A numinous and compulsively readable (and re-readable) collection…. As has always been true of his work, a restless intellect, fired by philosophical inquiry, coexists comfortably with the instinct to tell a good old-fashioned yarn. …Hage’s winning streak continues.” —Montreal Gazette

“Hage’s considerable strengths [are] in plain view…. [E]xtraordinary…. Part of the joy in reading [Stray Dogs] is being immersed in a variety of tones and meeting the motley crew of outsiders who inhabit the stories…. [A] must-read for fans.” —Calgary Herald

“Hage is one of the most erudite and densely allusive writers working in Canada today and…he asks provocative questions about theology, history and the process by which these concepts are handed down across generations. The story is thick with religious resonance, which emphasizes the…split between the divine and the worldly, the sacred and the profane…. These dichotomies exist at the centre of Hage’s novels and are also profound in the 11 stories that comprise Stray Dogs. Himself an accomplished photographer, Hage here reaffirms his devotion to acting as a witness for the fractious lives upended by history and the tides—sometimes literal—that threaten to mow them down.” —Steven W. Beattie, Toronto Star


PRAISE FOR RAWI HAGE

“[Hage’s writing] crackles with the kinetic energy of a dancer.” —Toronto Star

“[Beirut Hellfire Society is] elegantly beautiful…full of bleak humour and gem-like sentences.” —Maclean’s

“Narrated with verve and brilliance. [Cockroach] made me jump for joy.” —Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn and The Magician

“The things that make Rawi Hage a major literary talent…include freshness, gut-wrenching lyricism, boldness, emotional restraint, intellectual depth, historical sense, political subversiveness and uncompromising compassion.” —The Globe and Mail

“[De Niro’s Game is] a masterpiece…. Writing cannot really get much better.” —Literary Review of Canada