Guapa portrays a gay man stgglg wh shame amid the wreckage of a failed uprisg an unnamed Arab untry. The thor explas how this ‘fluent and passnate’ but is and isn’t his own story
Contents:
RENNTRE GRATUE GAY à PARIS, (75)
* alessandro haddad gay *
”Guapa, scribed the Guardian as “immensely readable … fluent, passnate and emotnally hont”, follows Rasa, a young gay man livg an unnamed Arab untry, over a sgle day the recent aftermath of a failed polil ’s grandmother Teta has jt disvered him bed wh his boyiend Taymour, who tri to “play by the l, one foot and one foot out”. Moments of his past play out as he mak his way around the cy on a day that he knows will end wh Taymour’s weddg, to a mutual and unspectg female a gay Arab man, Haddad is fascated by shame, but was also once plagued wh : growg up he felt ashamed for not fillg the ial male role. Now 33, livg London wh his partner and his dog, he grew up burned wh the knowledge that he would not have children or ntue the fay leage, a society where stereotyp about the effemacy of homosexual men abound.
As Rasa observ the novel, gay Arab men live a dified existence, where homosexualy is seen only a slight lightns of the wrists, a fearful self-awarens the ey – and not elaborate pri paras or overt, his own words, is a piece of human history. My mother prted out the Wikipedia page of homosexualy and they were gog through , tryg to unrstand .
After a recent book lnch Lebanon, he even managed to wheedle his dad to jog him at a gay bar to celebrate. ”)When he first mooted the novel, “a few people said, ‘Listen, ternatnal fictn don’t really sell and gay fictn don’t really sell.