The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine

Winner of the National Book Award
Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
One of TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of 2025
One of NPR's Books We Love of 2025
One of the Washington Post's 10 Best Audiobooks of 2025
One of the Washington Independent Review of Books's Favorite Books of 2025
One of the Globe and Mail's 100 Best Books of 2025
One of BookPage's Best Fiction Books of 2025
One of Shelf Awareness's Best Books of 2025
One of Apple's Best Books of 2025

"This sprawling tale centers on Raja, a man in his sixties who lives with his mother in Beirut, a city shaking with political and ecological turmoil. While the duo-both outsized personalities--navigate their cohabitation, Raja must weigh the responsibility he feels as a son against an opportunity to attend a writing residency in America. Raja's energetic narration is relentlessly funny, even (or especially) when it's turned to dark or disturbing events from his past. The story jumps back and forth through time and across continents, but Raja's sensitive and ultimately optimistic point of view is a gripping anchor."--The New Yorker

"Thoroughly absorbing."--Washington Post

"Alameddine's prose is winsome, warm-hearted, and very funny, but it is still sophisticated in its evocation of the trauma Raja suffers. At the heart of the novel is the mother Raja keeps trying to consign to parentheticals, who, with indomitable spirit, refuses to be consigned. This book is a treat from beginning to end."--Vox, "The 10 Best Books of 2025"

"This book--winner of the 2025 National Book Award for fiction--feels like sitting down with an old friend who is a brilliant storyteller. It's an amusing and beautifully written portrait of a mother and her middle-aged son that lingers long after you finish it. Rabih Alameddine's prose is so warm and vivid that you can almost hear him talking to you as you read. I loved his tender, nuanced portrayal of Raja's prying mother, Zalfa, and how he captures the complicated bond between mothers and their children."--Linah Mohammad, producer, All Things Considered

"Rabih Alameddine returns to Beirut, Lebanon as the volatile, beloved setting and muse for his new novel, the enticingly titled The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) . . . And though the novel bears witness to the indignities of the city of Beirut and its citizens, there is ebullience throughout this account, a devil-may-care delight in the act of telling . . . The momentum the title creates never lets up, and Alameddine, through Raja, delivers a tragic yet exuberant tale steeped in the experience of living Lebanese."--Winnipeg Free Press

"A tightrope walk, a magic trick . . . magnificently articulated through the instrument of Raja's voice."--Alta

"Hilarious, seasoned with history, and utterly brilliant."--Bay Area Reporter

"Rabih Alameddine's edgy charm always leaves room for compassion, which readers will find in abundance in this challenging but exceptional book."--BookPage (starred review)

"Alameddine is a writer with a boundless imagination."--NPR

From the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction comes a tragicomic love story set in Lebanon, a modern saga of family, memory, and the unbreakable attachment of a son and his mother

In a tiny Beirut apartment, sixty-three-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and "the neighborhood homosexual," Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son's desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail of Raja's work life and love life, boundaries be damned.

When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn't be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja longing for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget.

Told in Raja's irresistible and wickedly funny voice, the novel dances across six decades to tell the unforgettable story of a singular life and its absurdities--a tale of mistakes, self-discovery, trauma, and maybe even forgiveness. Above all, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) is a wildly unique and sparkling celebration of love.

Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels The Wrong End of the Telescope; Angel of History; An Unnecessary Woman; The Hakawati; I, the Divine; Koolaids; the story collection, The Perv; and one work of nonfiction, Comforting Myths. He has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He received the Dos Passos Prize in 2019, a Lannan Award in 2021, and the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award in 2025.