| For many Canadians war is essentially unfathomable. We feel sadness when images of death in foreign lands flash across our TV screens, we shake our heads and wish that human beings didn’t have the capability to kill each other. But war remains incomprehensible and far removed because we have been lucky enough not to experience it firsthand.
Rawi Hage’s first novel DeNiro’s Game (Anansi Press, 256 pp.) is such a visceral depiction of the reality of war that you truly feel that you are in Beirut, Lebanon during the brutal civil war of the 1970s and ’80s, dodging the bombs and watching an ancient society disintegrate as various internal and external forces tore the country apart.
"Lebanon became a terrain for regional and national conflicts and local conflicts. It was always some kind of a terrain for outside forces to exercise their powers," says Hage.
His book revolves around the friendship between two young men, both of whom turn to a life of crime in the midst of the ugly civil war. George becomes a soldier in the Christian militia, Bassam manages to stay out of the army but he and George set up a scam to steal money from a casino and Bassam also transports black market liquor. Bassam is desperate to escape Lebanon. George is obsessed with attaining power, status and money and he’s prepared to sacrifice his best friend in the process. He loves Bassam like a brother but at the same time betrays him repeatedly.
"He’s a little bit torn. He’s drunk on power and he wants to get it at any cost. His childhood friend is the only person who he has left as family. There is this dichotomy between what he wanted and what he was willing to sacrifice to get it," says Hage.
Bassam and George are faced with death every day but they are young, passionate, testosterone ridden and convinced of their invincibility. They are hungry to live because death stalks them so closely.
The novel is full of poetic descriptions of the surreal and horrific nature of war delivered through Bassam’s stream of consciousness narrative. There are lines that you are compelled to read again and again due to their raw beauty and their insight into how war irreparably shapes human psyches.
Hage spent half of his childhood, from age nine to 18, living through the civil war. Like his character Bassam he was extremely anxious to escape.
"I was eager to leave. I was obsessed with leaving for the West. I think the West represents, for a lot of kids, a place to escape to, a heaven," says Hage.
Hage moved to New York City when he was just 18 and stayed there for nine years until moving to Canada in 1992. He says his early immigrant experience ended up being as difficult as living in Lebanon during the war.
"I think New York was very hard for me, the language, and I worked hard and I felt like I couldn’t go back to Lebanon and I wasn’t getting anywhere. That was psychologically much harder and financially it was much harder than living in war. In war there’s always this threat of death. You could die at any minute but immigration was a total different anxiety, a cultural shock," he says.
After years of living in North America, Hage says his wartime experience was largely submerged until he began writing his first novel.
"I think I kind of kept it away for a long time until I started writing that book," he says.
Hage is also a visual artist whose main medium is photography, but he says writing has given him more scope.
"I think my problem with photography is I had a story and photography is just such a silent medium," he says.
"I love photography but I couldn’t elaborate. I couldn’t tell the full story. It’s a short, concise thing and I think I still have a few stories to tell, so at the moment I’m using this medium."
Hage is now working on a second novel that will be set in Montreal, but he’s reluctant to discuss the plot yet. Meanwhile, his first book has already achieved some literary acclaim. He was recently nominated for this year’s Giller Prize. The winner will be announced on November 7. |
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