Congrats to Rawi Hage — Canadian winner of the IMPAC

I’m so pleased to read that Rawi Hage was awardedthe IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (which The Globe and Mail calls ‘the world’s most lucrative literary prize for a single work of English fiction.’ I read De Niro’s Game last summer and was alternately blown away by his writing and depressed by the ongoing, unimaginable-to-those-of-us-living-in-comfort-and-security conditions he describes of life in war-torn Beirut — unimaginable, that is, until a writer of Hage’s scope forces us to at least try our armchair best to form the mental images of suffering. As the second Canadian to win this prize, he will certain expand the world’s conception of our literature — I love Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief but it falls rather comfortably into the history-encompassing, geography-based, rurally-dominated works many expect from us (altho’ I’ll rapidly add that MacLeod does really interesting work around class and masculinity and labour).

Hage’s novel also challenges those Paris-o-philes among us, broadening our view of the city as much as, if not more than Nancy Huston’s Mark of an Angel and, to a lesser extent, Lauren B. Davis’ The Radiant City. In fact, I’m thinking that if I can only carve out a package of time once I get past the stack of unread books on my desk, beside my armchair, and next to the bed, I’d like to read these three together one week this summer. If only technology, as well as providing us with Spam, cellphone rings in our favourite restaurant, and lemon-scented plug-in air fresheners, could also allow for the expansion of an hour here and there (let me quickly qualify that request by saying I’d get to pick the hour — whew! shades of Five Children and It, for any Nesbit readers out there . . .)