An Unnecessary Woman - Rabih Alameddine - Part 1

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 175

June 24, 2017 

An Unnecessary Woman - Rabih
Alameddine

Book 51 - An Unnecessary Woman
Rabih Alameddine - 2013
 Part 1 - p. 1-291
Reading Time - 5 hours

A friend recommended this book to me. It's a fictional story about an old, divorced Lebanese woman. She loves books and translates English or French books into Arabic. But she doesn't translate books originally written in English or French. No, she translates books that were written in another language and then translated into English or French. So, she might translate War and Peace, but from an English translation. It's an odd choice but... she's a bit of an odd woman. And since it's her life, she gets to make the rules. After a translation is finished, she bundles it up and tucks the translation away into boxes.

Hers is an odd life and throughout the course of the book, we learn about her backstory - how she was married at the age of 20 and divorced a few years later. How she supported herself by working in a used bookshop for over 50 years. It is a bit of a sad, depressing story, but the end of the story lifts one up. She loosens up a bit and decides that she will allow herself to translate books originally written in English or French. She's stepping out a bit, living a bit more dangerously! The story is clearly a love story between the woman her literary work. She loves books and she loves translating. In the end, she allows herself to step outside of her own self-imposed boundaries and experience something new.