The Angel of History by Rabih Alameddine

In them, Jacob tells stories about his childhood being moved from place to place within the so-called “Arab World” (from Yemen to Cairo to Beirut), as well as stories of his troubled life both during his life with Doc and after Doc’s death.

These narrations take the form of journal entries, generally addressed to Doc, Jacob’s lover who died of AIDS 20 years earlier. He is accompanied on his visit by Satan, whose presence only Jacob can perceive.Īs Jacob’s first person narration describes events and circumstances as he and Satan wait to be seen by intake counselors, further first person narration describes experiences that brought Jacob to this point in his life. Middle-aged Jacob, an immigrant from the Middle East who arrived in America several decades earlier, visits a free clinic in search of mental health counseling – specifically, time in a psychiatric hospital. The book’s anchoring narrative line, or thread, is set in the present. The collage-like narrative shifts points of view between first-person narrator/protagonist Jacob and third-person descriptions of conversations between Satan and other spiritual influences on Jacob’s life. Lost we are, so the jackals and coyotes, the wolves red and gray, howl for us, howl at the baby-faced moon.The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Alameddine, Rabih. The howl has been traveling for thousands of years, from the beginning of time, when Adam and Eve tasted the fruit and Satan triumphed and his son, Death, was born, when loss became our intimate, across deserts and seas the howl moves, loaded with dust and grime and brine, searching for souls to remind them to grieve, but we pay little attention, always avoiding, always moving forward, our souls filled with termite holes that the howl passes through, only whistling. Auntie Badeea used to say that jackals have howled at the innocent moon for aeons because they mourn the fact that they are not eternal, that when Death with his pale eyes comes for them they will be no more, unlike us who climb up Jacob's ladder to Heaven in God's embrace or fall to Satan's fiery Hell. “The howl, Doc, not the silence of the lambs, the howl stays with me, I hear it, I scream, I raise my arms to the sky, I try, Doc, I try to defend myself, to protect my soul.

The Angel of History by Rabih Alameddine