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Lebanese Novelist Rabih Alameddine Wins Prestigious National Book Awards
Lebanese American novelist Rabih Alameddine just won the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction for his novel The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother).
Often regarded as the Oscars of literature, the National Book Awards are among the most prestigious literary prizes in the United States. They recognize outstanding writing across several genres.
His award-winning novel centers on Raja, a 63-year-old philosophy teacher in Beirut, who lives with his octogenarian mother, Zalfa. The story spans six decades, blending dark humor and emotional depth. It explores their complex bond, family memory, and the turbulence of modern Lebanon.
About his career
This isn’t the first award that Alameddine received for his extraordinary writing. In fact, his literary career is studded with other significant accolades.
In 2022, his novel The Wrong End of the Telescope (2021) won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He also earned the Lannan Literary Award (2021), the John Dos Passos Prize (2019), and, most recently, the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement (2025).
Among his earlier works, An Unnecessary Woman was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2014. The novel is a reflective portrait of a reclusive woman in Beirut who lives through the Lebanese Civil War and finds solace in books. Another novel, The Angel of History, earned the Arab American Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award in 2017.
Alameddine has long cemented his status as a major voice of contemporary diasporic Arab literature, known as a writer who weaves personal, political, and cultural histories into stories that speak far beyond Lebanon.
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