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Koolaids: The Art of War
Detailing the impact of the AIDS epidemic and the Lebanese civil war in Beirut on a circle of friends and family, "Koolaids" tells the stories of characters who can no longer love or think except in fragments of time, each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears. Clips, quips, vignettes and hallucinations, tragic news reports and hilarious short plays, conversations with both the quick and the dead, all shine their combined lights to reveal the way we experience life today in this ambitious novel.
256 pages, Paperback
Published July 1, 1999
About the author
Rabih Alameddine
21 books1,119 followersRabih Alameddine (Arabic: ربيع علم الدين; born 1959) is an American painter and writer. His 2021 novel The Wrong End of the Telescope won the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Alameddine was born in Amman, Jordan to Lebanese Druze parents. He grew up in Kuwait and Lebanon, which he left at age 17 to live first in England and then in California to pursue higher education. He earned a degree in engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Master of Business in San Francisco.
Alameddine began his career as an engineer, then moved to writing and painting. His debut novel Koolaids, which touched on both the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco and the Lebanese Civil War, was published in 1998 by Picador.
The author of six novels and a collection of short stories, Alameddine was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. His queer sensibility has added a different slant to narratives about immigrants within the context of what became known as Orientalism.
In 2014, Alameddine was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and he won the California Book Awards Gold Medal Fiction for An Unnecessary Woman.
Alameddine is best known for this novel, which tells the story of Aaliya, a Lebanese woman and translator living in war-torn Lebanon. The novel "manifests traumatic signposts of the [Lebanese] civil war, which make it indelibly situational, and accordingly latches onto complex psychological issues."
In 2017, Alameddine won the Arab American Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction for The Angel of History.
In 2018 he was teaching in the University of Virginia's creative writing program, in Charlottesville.
He was shortlisted for the 2021 Sunday Times Short Story Award for his story, "The July War".
His novel The Wrong End of the Telescope won the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Alameddine was born in Amman, Jordan to Lebanese Druze parents. He grew up in Kuwait and Lebanon, which he left at age 17 to live first in England and then in California to pursue higher education. He earned a degree in engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Master of Business in San Francisco.
Alameddine began his career as an engineer, then moved to writing and painting. His debut novel Koolaids, which touched on both the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco and the Lebanese Civil War, was published in 1998 by Picador.
The author of six novels and a collection of short stories, Alameddine was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. His queer sensibility has added a different slant to narratives about immigrants within the context of what became known as Orientalism.
In 2014, Alameddine was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and he won the California Book Awards Gold Medal Fiction for An Unnecessary Woman.
Alameddine is best known for this novel, which tells the story of Aaliya, a Lebanese woman and translator living in war-torn Lebanon. The novel "manifests traumatic signposts of the [Lebanese] civil war, which make it indelibly situational, and accordingly latches onto complex psychological issues."
In 2017, Alameddine won the Arab American Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction for The Angel of History.
In 2018 he was teaching in the University of Virginia's creative writing program, in Charlottesville.
He was shortlisted for the 2021 Sunday Times Short Story Award for his story, "The July War".
His novel The Wrong End of the Telescope won the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 110 reviews
March 30, 2017
3.5 stars.
Initial thoughts:
Initial thoughts:
I am torn. I adore many parts of the book, I dislike a few and I don't know what to think about some others...*sigh*...This one is not easy to review for me...But I am going to review it.
I'm REALLY happy that I have The Hakawatiand An Unnecessary Woman: A Novel to read. This man CAN write.
April 23, 2008
nonlinear and a little annoying.
this is the kind of book that people say that like because it gives them mad street cred, but really i'm too old and not artsy fartsy enough for that anymore. don't get me wrong, there were some powerful moments, but i got the impression the author knew they were powerful so that negates a bunch of it in my head.
what i did enjoy was the small bits of history and culture of a people that white kids like myself don't know enough about.
this is the kind of book that people say that like because it gives them mad street cred, but really i'm too old and not artsy fartsy enough for that anymore. don't get me wrong, there were some powerful moments, but i got the impression the author knew they were powerful so that negates a bunch of it in my head.
what i did enjoy was the small bits of history and culture of a people that white kids like myself don't know enough about.
March 12, 2023
“America is the birthplace of Wheel of Fortune and I will never forgive it for that.”
February 26, 2025
Felt my heart break more and more with every passing page. Haven't read a novel this witty yet gut-wrenching in a very long time.
March 20, 2009
I read this book after being blown away by The Hakawati (speaking of underlining book titles, the MLA has changed their guidelines to suggest italics instead), and wanted to read something else by Alameddine. There is not much of comparison between the two works. The multiple narrative perspectives are there in both books, Lebanon as seen by an expatriot, but the similarities end there.
Koolaids makes parallels between war-torn Lebanon and the gay community torn apart by the AIDS epidemic. The main perspective is Mohammad, a painter from Lebanon who moves to the United States and is part of a close community of gay men. We experience the civil war in Lebanon and the AIDS epidemic through the lenses of several characters: a mother's diary in Lebanon; recollections of dreams; quotations from famous authors; humorous scenes based on the Bhagavad Gita; memories from members of the community in San Francisco. The narrative unravels like the delirious end-of-life ramblings of an invalid, and it is often difficult to tell who is who.
Let's see a sample:
"In normal situations calling oneself a bookworm may not be pejorative; however, this was a gay BBS [computer bulletin board:], which the majority, if not all, of the men used to cruise for sex. In this case, it was the kiss of death."(32)
"Do you realize if antidepressants were available fifty years ago, the existentialists could have been happy? We would have been spared reading so many dull books."(44)
"So here we have the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. God destroys the faggots with fire and brimstone. He turns a disobedient wife into salt. But he asks us to idolize drunks who sleep with their daughters or offer them to a horny, unruly mob."(64)
"I just read the peace plan in Lebanon between Hizballah and Israel. It sounds like a tag team professional wrestling match with too many referees."(79)
"Ya Rabbi Tegi Fi Aino is an Egyptian virus, first discovered in June of 1967, probably in the Sinai. It afflicts Semites in the Middle East, both Arabs and Israelis. Those infected with the virus are known to close their eyes, and fire, hoping to hit something. Translated from the Egyptian dialect, Ya Rabbi Tegi Fi Aino means "Oh God, I hope this gets him in the eye."(97)
"I always thought AIDS should be a trademark of Burroughs Wellcome. You know, AIDS(TM) is a registered trademark of Burroughs Wellcome, use of this trademark without paying royalties to its rightful owner is a crime punishable by a slow, torturous, torturous death."(167)
"All I can say is, I am glad I'm not Christian. For us Muslims, we just stone adulterers to death, which is much more humane than guilt."(175)
"Easter. My favorite holiday. A deeply philosophical time of the year when I ponder what on earth a bunny rabbit has to do with eggs and why, if they beat you, spit on you, and nail you to a cross, you'd want to call that particular Friday a Good Friday? If that happened to me, I'd call it The Worst Friday of My Life."(196)
"I was sitting, smoking a pipe by the fire, when Updike asked me, 'What more fiendish proof of cosmic irresponsibility than a Nature which, having invented sex as a way to mix genes, then permits to arise, amid all its perfumed and hypnotic inducements to mate, a tireless tribe of spirochetes and viruses that torture and kill us for following orders?'"(237)
"Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph."(240)
"Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever."(240)
Koolaids makes parallels between war-torn Lebanon and the gay community torn apart by the AIDS epidemic. The main perspective is Mohammad, a painter from Lebanon who moves to the United States and is part of a close community of gay men. We experience the civil war in Lebanon and the AIDS epidemic through the lenses of several characters: a mother's diary in Lebanon; recollections of dreams; quotations from famous authors; humorous scenes based on the Bhagavad Gita; memories from members of the community in San Francisco. The narrative unravels like the delirious end-of-life ramblings of an invalid, and it is often difficult to tell who is who.
Let's see a sample:
"In normal situations calling oneself a bookworm may not be pejorative; however, this was a gay BBS [computer bulletin board:], which the majority, if not all, of the men used to cruise for sex. In this case, it was the kiss of death."(32)
"Do you realize if antidepressants were available fifty years ago, the existentialists could have been happy? We would have been spared reading so many dull books."(44)
"So here we have the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. God destroys the faggots with fire and brimstone. He turns a disobedient wife into salt. But he asks us to idolize drunks who sleep with their daughters or offer them to a horny, unruly mob."(64)
"I just read the peace plan in Lebanon between Hizballah and Israel. It sounds like a tag team professional wrestling match with too many referees."(79)
"Ya Rabbi Tegi Fi Aino is an Egyptian virus, first discovered in June of 1967, probably in the Sinai. It afflicts Semites in the Middle East, both Arabs and Israelis. Those infected with the virus are known to close their eyes, and fire, hoping to hit something. Translated from the Egyptian dialect, Ya Rabbi Tegi Fi Aino means "Oh God, I hope this gets him in the eye."(97)
"I always thought AIDS should be a trademark of Burroughs Wellcome. You know, AIDS(TM) is a registered trademark of Burroughs Wellcome, use of this trademark without paying royalties to its rightful owner is a crime punishable by a slow, torturous, torturous death."(167)
"All I can say is, I am glad I'm not Christian. For us Muslims, we just stone adulterers to death, which is much more humane than guilt."(175)
"Easter. My favorite holiday. A deeply philosophical time of the year when I ponder what on earth a bunny rabbit has to do with eggs and why, if they beat you, spit on you, and nail you to a cross, you'd want to call that particular Friday a Good Friday? If that happened to me, I'd call it The Worst Friday of My Life."(196)
"I was sitting, smoking a pipe by the fire, when Updike asked me, 'What more fiendish proof of cosmic irresponsibility than a Nature which, having invented sex as a way to mix genes, then permits to arise, amid all its perfumed and hypnotic inducements to mate, a tireless tribe of spirochetes and viruses that torture and kill us for following orders?'"(237)
"Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph."(240)
"Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever."(240)
April 9, 2014
4.3*. alameddine's first novel is quite challenging. it is challenging in form {non-linear, free form prose at times, poetry at times, you are never quite sure who is expressing their views at times} and in subject matter {the aids epidemic, the lebanese civil war and the meaning of life}. alameddine is very nationalistic but at the same time, hates the lebanese for hating him because he is a homosexual. it is an angry book as he hates equally israel and syria for how they are destroying his country with america's involvement a close third. the sex scenes are at times graphic and they are interchangeable with the violence. the mood of the book is at time hilarious and at time profound. it sure makes me want to learn more about the history of lebanon.
September 28, 2016
Have loved the books by Rabih Alameddine so this was a disappointment compared to those.
Part of the problem for me was the constantly changing narrator (and I couldn't always tell who was who). So couldn't tell whose opinion on certain things I was hearing.
It was frustrating, but also went in with very high expectations and those are hard to live up to sometimes.
Part of the problem for me was the constantly changing narrator (and I couldn't always tell who was who). So couldn't tell whose opinion on certain things I was hearing.
It was frustrating, but also went in with very high expectations and those are hard to live up to sometimes.
July 27, 2025
his deprecating tone helped me understand the devastating and ironic nature of lebanon’s political history, i loved his characters and i wish i was able to follow through as there were too many girls and gays to tell apart sometimes. regardless it was a page turner and i can’t wait to read more from him!
February 15, 2026
To endure life after living it. My heart broke at every page like it was the first. The feeling of uncertainty, chaos , fear, love, acceptance and how not to take it all too seriously. Reading it felt as chaotic and emotionally charged as a glimpse into the experience of a gay lebanese man in the 80s.
March 12, 2025
beautiful haunting and bitchy!!
July 7, 2025
I laughed out loud, I cried but more importantly I couldn’t put this book down. Brilliantly crafted.
Read
October 2, 2009Okay, how much bolder can you get than comparing the Lebanese Civil War to the AIDS crisis? Scathing, hilarious, and over-the-top-- from a painter who copies bad paintings of naked Asian boys to an analysis of Sodom and Gomorrah where Lot is the obvious pimp to a transition between checkpoints in Beirut and “the good old days” of condomless sex-- really, who doesn’t want to drink the Kool-Aid?
Oh -- and another painter whose sells abstract work for high-end US galleries, but really it’s not abstract at all but pictures of the doorways of Lebanese houses. Alameddine skewers the art world and an endless lineup of “great thinkers” from Nietzsche to Muriel Spark. Or maybe he’s invoking them. Really, what’s the difference, anyway? Did EM Forster really say, “Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him?”
Sure, there are moments when the book gets a little gimmicky, but when the narrator is making fun of the gimmicks, all you can do is keep reading, let your mouth hang open. From a dream of eating the piano because siblings know how to cut up the pie to a description of the Centers for Disease Control as the “post office with white lab coats” -- yes, give me more…
Oh -- and another painter whose sells abstract work for high-end US galleries, but really it’s not abstract at all but pictures of the doorways of Lebanese houses. Alameddine skewers the art world and an endless lineup of “great thinkers” from Nietzsche to Muriel Spark. Or maybe he’s invoking them. Really, what’s the difference, anyway? Did EM Forster really say, “Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him?”
Sure, there are moments when the book gets a little gimmicky, but when the narrator is making fun of the gimmicks, all you can do is keep reading, let your mouth hang open. From a dream of eating the piano because siblings know how to cut up the pie to a description of the Centers for Disease Control as the “post office with white lab coats” -- yes, give me more…
December 9, 2025
"What if I told you that life has no unity? It is a series of nonlinear vignettes leading nowhere, a tale, told by an idiot, fully of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It makes no sense, enjoy it."
"How would you like to go through life with a name like Muriel?"
"Easter. My favorite holiday. A deeply philosophical time of the year when I ponder what on earth a bunny rabbit has to do with eggs and why, if they beat you, spit on you, and nail you to a cross, you'd want to call that particular Friday a Good Friday? If that happened to me, I'd call it The Worst Friday of My Life. But that's why Jesus is The Redeemer and I'm just another nobody."
“I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.”
Considering that I didn't know who was narrating at least half of the segments, I was actually pretty surprised at how much I enjoyed this. Very excited to read more by this author.
"How would you like to go through life with a name like Muriel?"
"Easter. My favorite holiday. A deeply philosophical time of the year when I ponder what on earth a bunny rabbit has to do with eggs and why, if they beat you, spit on you, and nail you to a cross, you'd want to call that particular Friday a Good Friday? If that happened to me, I'd call it The Worst Friday of My Life. But that's why Jesus is The Redeemer and I'm just another nobody."
“I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.”
Considering that I didn't know who was narrating at least half of the segments, I was actually pretty surprised at how much I enjoyed this. Very excited to read more by this author.
January 27, 2014
If you read this book as a collection of texts and ideas, you can't but appreciate the deep view the author gave to the Lebanese society but if you want to take it as one book with a plot and characters I guess you will feel exactly the way I did "W.T.F"... Really, in most of it is parts I didn't know who is talking or about what?
June 13, 2020
Alameddine manages, in the three novels i have read, to take difficult issues/themes and create novels, that while complex, with such an ease. “Koolaids” is told in prayer, poem, diary entries, letters (real and imagined), conversations with authors, quotes (real and imagined). A history of Lebanon, family, love, and AIDS.
September 7, 2013
I liked so many parts of this book, I just wish it's a little more cohesive, at times I didn't knew who the hell is narrating which part. I think I'll read it a few times,just to grasp it better.
October 24, 2015
meh. not nearly as good as his other books, you can tell it's his first novel. strongly recommend both hakawati and an unnecessary woman.
January 20, 2020
Nisam shvatila ovu knjigu.
S jedne strane ratni sukobi u Libanu,a s druge gay mladići oboljeli od aidsa.
S jedne strane ratni sukobi u Libanu,a s druge gay mladići oboljeli od aidsa.
September 18, 2017
Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids, is a piece that has three predominant themes: AIDS, Lebanon as an identity, and a non-linear narrative that underscores the importance of remaining un-conforming to straightness--- in the form of narrative and male sexuality.
The narrators include Mohammad, Samir, Samir’s mother, and Kurt. Each character has AIDS and/or has been greatly affected by AIDS. Each character is Lebanese and is traumatically wrought with the violence of being superimposed upon by continuous warfare between Syria, Israel, and Palestine. This shared consciousness is compounded by the AIDS epidemic which repeatedly takes the lives of Mohammad’s friends which we continuously read about, until Mohammad dies too. Throughout the novel, warfare and AIDS are tragedies that position our narrators in states of peril as they mull over those who’ve died or will die--- and even, how they will die. Death becomes a proxy of fear.
As narrators are placed in this position, their struggles convey the powerlessness they feel as the unnatural deaths accumulate and give weight to the idea of not just death, but the fear of disappearing forever (the idea of disappearing from the collective consciousness, esp. loved ones).
In response, Mohammed, Samir, and Kurt begin to counteract this fear by creating traces and sharing those traces. Each narrator offers vignettes of themselves in stories that construct their presence. They leave traces of themselves in letters, scholarship, paintings, and parts of themselves in the minds of others via this art (letters, scholarship, and paintings). They do this so they when they die, they won’t completely disappear.
This includes Lebanon. Narrators collectively detest the idea of Lebanon being dissolved into a narrative that absolves nearing nations. Nearing nations such as Syria, Israel, and Palestine, have placed Lebanon in the crossfires of a war that is not their own. Directly parallel to these concerns are the historical accounts of the oppressive regimes that have reigned over the Indigenous Lebanese for thousands of years. Samir explains that Lebanon’s indigenous descendants include Palestinians, Syrians, and Jordans, as well as the Lebanese; all who have changed their allegiance and religion according to who has occupied their region. Samir’s scholarship to understand the past is a move toward understanding a Lebanon identity beyond the empires and corresponding religious mores that controlled such an identity. This also indicates Samir is reclaiming the body politic of the Indigenous, essentially reclaiming control over his own body and mind as he sees their consciousness as collective and still confined by current-day political incursions that create warfare.
Throughout the novel, the piece uses a variety of narrative styles to convey a complete story. The chronologically non-linear progression throughout the novel alternates between narrators and forms that demonstrate the chaotic atmosphere that our narrators hold as they handle the sudden violence of war and the slow ravages of AIDS. This type of form also diverts from the centralist’s approach that is so often used to explain such matters. By using this approach, Alameddine is forcing us to place substantial effort on characters such as Samir, Mohammad, and Kurt so we understand who they are--- to the point we need no subheaders or labels to indicate their person, their voice, their presence--- this extends to understanding the intricacies of their circumstances.
As for Samir's mother, her narrative is the most straight-forward and comes in the form of letters that are not directed at anyone in particular. Yet the fact that they remain insular forms of expression, indicate the emotional isolation of a reserved Lebanon. This kind of emotional isolation is a result of a political hegemony. This type of political hegemony refuses to acknowledge a complex historical narrative, even if conveyed in a familiar form. The unwillingness to publish the letters, mirrors not just the family’s fear, but the stilted and occupied collective consciousness that results from doing what is expected.
The narrators include Mohammad, Samir, Samir’s mother, and Kurt. Each character has AIDS and/or has been greatly affected by AIDS. Each character is Lebanese and is traumatically wrought with the violence of being superimposed upon by continuous warfare between Syria, Israel, and Palestine. This shared consciousness is compounded by the AIDS epidemic which repeatedly takes the lives of Mohammad’s friends which we continuously read about, until Mohammad dies too. Throughout the novel, warfare and AIDS are tragedies that position our narrators in states of peril as they mull over those who’ve died or will die--- and even, how they will die. Death becomes a proxy of fear.
As narrators are placed in this position, their struggles convey the powerlessness they feel as the unnatural deaths accumulate and give weight to the idea of not just death, but the fear of disappearing forever (the idea of disappearing from the collective consciousness, esp. loved ones).
In response, Mohammed, Samir, and Kurt begin to counteract this fear by creating traces and sharing those traces. Each narrator offers vignettes of themselves in stories that construct their presence. They leave traces of themselves in letters, scholarship, paintings, and parts of themselves in the minds of others via this art (letters, scholarship, and paintings). They do this so they when they die, they won’t completely disappear.
This includes Lebanon. Narrators collectively detest the idea of Lebanon being dissolved into a narrative that absolves nearing nations. Nearing nations such as Syria, Israel, and Palestine, have placed Lebanon in the crossfires of a war that is not their own. Directly parallel to these concerns are the historical accounts of the oppressive regimes that have reigned over the Indigenous Lebanese for thousands of years. Samir explains that Lebanon’s indigenous descendants include Palestinians, Syrians, and Jordans, as well as the Lebanese; all who have changed their allegiance and religion according to who has occupied their region. Samir’s scholarship to understand the past is a move toward understanding a Lebanon identity beyond the empires and corresponding religious mores that controlled such an identity. This also indicates Samir is reclaiming the body politic of the Indigenous, essentially reclaiming control over his own body and mind as he sees their consciousness as collective and still confined by current-day political incursions that create warfare.
Throughout the novel, the piece uses a variety of narrative styles to convey a complete story. The chronologically non-linear progression throughout the novel alternates between narrators and forms that demonstrate the chaotic atmosphere that our narrators hold as they handle the sudden violence of war and the slow ravages of AIDS. This type of form also diverts from the centralist’s approach that is so often used to explain such matters. By using this approach, Alameddine is forcing us to place substantial effort on characters such as Samir, Mohammad, and Kurt so we understand who they are--- to the point we need no subheaders or labels to indicate their person, their voice, their presence--- this extends to understanding the intricacies of their circumstances.
As for Samir's mother, her narrative is the most straight-forward and comes in the form of letters that are not directed at anyone in particular. Yet the fact that they remain insular forms of expression, indicate the emotional isolation of a reserved Lebanon. This kind of emotional isolation is a result of a political hegemony. This type of political hegemony refuses to acknowledge a complex historical narrative, even if conveyed in a familiar form. The unwillingness to publish the letters, mirrors not just the family’s fear, but the stilted and occupied collective consciousness that results from doing what is expected.
September 28, 2026
This could have been an email.
The author is so insufferable with his weird hyperfixation on sex and sexuality, he writes them in the most disgusting ways. Pedophilia and incest are casually thrown in there because why not. Unnecessary sex scenes that serve nothing to the story?? Especially because this is written in fragments and in various narrators voices it just feels weird and out of place like surely there are more important scenes to be writing in fragments than a sex scene???
There really are only a few excerpts I took from the book that were important and fitting to the themes of diaspora, war, and identity. The rest of the book is just a huge question mark and exclamation point. I can't count the times I asked myself "why am I reading this right now?"
The author is so insufferable with his weird hyperfixation on sex and sexuality, he writes them in the most disgusting ways. Pedophilia and incest are casually thrown in there because why not. Unnecessary sex scenes that serve nothing to the story?? Especially because this is written in fragments and in various narrators voices it just feels weird and out of place like surely there are more important scenes to be writing in fragments than a sex scene???
There really are only a few excerpts I took from the book that were important and fitting to the themes of diaspora, war, and identity. The rest of the book is just a huge question mark and exclamation point. I can't count the times I asked myself "why am I reading this right now?"
November 6, 2025
It’s wild to think about how Koolaid’s Art of War must have hit when it first came out. Alameddine wasn’t just writing about queer life, he was dissecting it, exposing its messy, sexual, political truth at a time when that kind of honesty was almost unheard of.
It’s beautifully matter of fact. Casual. Honest. Natural.
Reading it now, it’s hard not to feel this strange mix of admiration and distance. I became sexually active in 1990 America, when AIDS was still reshaping what intimacy even meant, so those themes do feel personal like a window to two decades of fear, loss, and adaptation.
But now, another twenty-plus years later, you can sense how those same ideas don’t land the same way for today’s youth. Their world feels so removed from that kind of urgency, and the ignorance of what it cost to get here sort of dulls the gratitude. It also confronts me with how ignorant I’d been of Israel’s decades-long assaults on that region — how easy it is to miss the scale of suffering when privilege keeps you sheltered. This book doesn’t just tell a story; it exposes incredible truths about the struggles of an ethnic and sexual minority.
This wasn’t a fun or easy book to read. The structure or lack of it is at times uncomfortable. If you read other reviews some came for the gay and not the political history, but I have to say, I thought they were both struggles that are equally moving and underrepresented. I’d even say the political feels like the point of the book and the gay is the sugar coating.
It’s beautifully matter of fact. Casual. Honest. Natural.
Reading it now, it’s hard not to feel this strange mix of admiration and distance. I became sexually active in 1990 America, when AIDS was still reshaping what intimacy even meant, so those themes do feel personal like a window to two decades of fear, loss, and adaptation.
But now, another twenty-plus years later, you can sense how those same ideas don’t land the same way for today’s youth. Their world feels so removed from that kind of urgency, and the ignorance of what it cost to get here sort of dulls the gratitude. It also confronts me with how ignorant I’d been of Israel’s decades-long assaults on that region — how easy it is to miss the scale of suffering when privilege keeps you sheltered. This book doesn’t just tell a story; it exposes incredible truths about the struggles of an ethnic and sexual minority.
This wasn’t a fun or easy book to read. The structure or lack of it is at times uncomfortable. If you read other reviews some came for the gay and not the political history, but I have to say, I thought they were both struggles that are equally moving and underrepresented. I’d even say the political feels like the point of the book and the gay is the sugar coating.
September 2, 2010
"Man is nothing more than giant genitalia for viruses."
"I yearn for a moment I know nothing of.
I pine for a feeling, as impression of myself as content, fulfilled. At times, I feel it as a yearning for a lover, someone to share my life with, someone to laugh with. I loved, lost, and loved again. The longing never abated. I was only distracted for a little while. I searched for the elusive grail.
In that moment, I envision myself joyous, spiritually felicitous. When I shut my eyes, I feel the possibility of the moment. I long to understand.
Someday, I used to tell myself. Someday, I will know the moment I yearn for, someday.
I wait for the peace beyond all understanding.
I lie on my deathbed waiting.
I yearn for a moment I know nothing of."
"Easter. My favorite holiday. A deeply philosophical time of the year when I ponder what on earth a bunny rabbit has to do with eggs and why, if they beat you, spit on you, and nail you to a cross, you'd want to call that particular Friday a Good Friday? If that happened to me, I'd call it The Worst Friday of My Life. But that's why Jesus is The Redeemer and I'm just another nobody."
"I yearn for a moment I know nothing of.
I pine for a feeling, as impression of myself as content, fulfilled. At times, I feel it as a yearning for a lover, someone to share my life with, someone to laugh with. I loved, lost, and loved again. The longing never abated. I was only distracted for a little while. I searched for the elusive grail.
In that moment, I envision myself joyous, spiritually felicitous. When I shut my eyes, I feel the possibility of the moment. I long to understand.
Someday, I used to tell myself. Someday, I will know the moment I yearn for, someday.
I wait for the peace beyond all understanding.
I lie on my deathbed waiting.
I yearn for a moment I know nothing of."
"Easter. My favorite holiday. A deeply philosophical time of the year when I ponder what on earth a bunny rabbit has to do with eggs and why, if they beat you, spit on you, and nail you to a cross, you'd want to call that particular Friday a Good Friday? If that happened to me, I'd call it The Worst Friday of My Life. But that's why Jesus is The Redeemer and I'm just another nobody."
Read
November 10, 2017– Death comes in many shapes and sizes, but it always comes.
No one escapes the little tag on the big toe. –
– Whether it was sunset, sunrise, cloudy day, or sunny day, Ben's skies were always cerulean blue. –
– Man is nothing more than giant genitalia for viruses. –
– What if I told you that life has no unity? It is a series of nonlinear vignettes leading nowhere, a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It makes no sense, enjoy it. –
– Do you realize if antidepressants were available fifty years ago, the existentialists could have been happy? We would have been spared reading so many dull books. –
– Many people remember past lives clearly. How is that possible, you ask.
Drugs is one possibility. Schizophrenia is another. –
– I wanted to write a poem on my deathbed. –
– In the cosmic circularity of the doctrine of the eternal return, Nietzsche forces together times and eternity. What is, has been, and will be innumerable times at immense intervals. Who gives a shit, I ask you? –
No one escapes the little tag on the big toe. –
– Whether it was sunset, sunrise, cloudy day, or sunny day, Ben's skies were always cerulean blue. –
– Man is nothing more than giant genitalia for viruses. –
– What if I told you that life has no unity? It is a series of nonlinear vignettes leading nowhere, a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It makes no sense, enjoy it. –
– Do you realize if antidepressants were available fifty years ago, the existentialists could have been happy? We would have been spared reading so many dull books. –
– Many people remember past lives clearly. How is that possible, you ask.
Drugs is one possibility. Schizophrenia is another. –
– I wanted to write a poem on my deathbed. –
– In the cosmic circularity of the doctrine of the eternal return, Nietzsche forces together times and eternity. What is, has been, and will be innumerable times at immense intervals. Who gives a shit, I ask you? –
August 14, 2013
An ancient tale. Magical, incisive, dreamlike, floating among narrators in a fog of time, place and character. Blurring and blending hate, love, death and life, it is near biblical in its scope and essence. A deft and poetic exploration of tribes vs. the "other"--for without one the other cannot exist, of what it means to be a family--inherant and created, of loyalty--and where does/should loyalty lie... But ultimately about what it means to be human, homo sapien or just plain homo. Alameddine exposes and excavates an elemental raw, gut truth that is oh so painful to listen to but oh so necessary to hear. Listen, and hear those moans and cries of woe for thee too shall one day mourn and, hopefully, be mourned.
December 19, 2012
It is a book raising AIDS, civil war in Lebanon, and conflicts amongst Lebanese territory for thirty years.
I like the structure and the form.
When it comes to content, I think it's full of rage, anger and negative signs in spite of some shining situations therein.
I had to read a university thesis explaining in detail the book and the thoughts raised within its pages.
I don't criticize the author for his approach, neither agree on it.
After all, there is a message to pass here. For me, the author reacted repeatedly rather than acting. It's a book of reactions
I guess that anyone reads the book would agree that it is a DIFFERENT book, DIFFERENT style. One of its few advantages
I like the structure and the form.
When it comes to content, I think it's full of rage, anger and negative signs in spite of some shining situations therein.
I had to read a university thesis explaining in detail the book and the thoughts raised within its pages.
I don't criticize the author for his approach, neither agree on it.
After all, there is a message to pass here. For me, the author reacted repeatedly rather than acting. It's a book of reactions
I guess that anyone reads the book would agree that it is a DIFFERENT book, DIFFERENT style. One of its few advantages
July 24, 2018
While I don’t mind, and at times can even appreciate, a book that continuously jumps from one idea to the next, this book was all over the place- and not in a good way. Over 240 pages of scattered thoughts and opinions. What allowed me to power on and finish the book were the social and cultural commentaries on politics in Lebanon, the AIDS epidemic, and the correlation between the two. The book could’ve been more powerful and groundbreaking as a work of nonfiction, which I’m not sure it isn’t...
March 11, 2026
Koolaids is the first book I’ve read in a long time where as soon as I finished it I wanted to restart it, and reread and reread until I understood every reference and explored all the threads and potential interpretations of the novel. I then want to read it one more time just for fun to really enjoy the language.
Alameddine is masterful at simple but beautiful prose. He is also scathing, angry, funny, observant, devastating, understated. He builds knowable characters using just fragments, simultaneously abandoning and experimenting with plot.
Alameddine is masterful at simple but beautiful prose. He is also scathing, angry, funny, observant, devastating, understated. He builds knowable characters using just fragments, simultaneously abandoning and experimenting with plot.
May 10, 2009
The author tries over and over to show a parallel between the AIDS epidemic and the civil war in Lebanon. This book is a collection of short thoughts on many topics-the ramblings of people dying of AIDS. The different voices are not identified and it is often not clear who is speaking. As someone who reads every word of a book, I have to say there were parts I skimmed over pretty fast-mostly sections of the Koran that were interspersed. Confusing book.
February 24, 2012
Despite its fragmented narrative that is somehow hard to comprehend with multiple narrators, this book grants the reader a dramatic yet a genuine outlook of the Lebanese history,civil war and its community through the eyes of different personas shedding light on expatriates, homosexuality and the AIDS epidemic back in the late 80's early 90's. If you are a fan of puzzles, then you have picked the right book to trigger your mind with Alameddine exceptional narration.
May 18, 2024
one of the most unique reading experiences i’ve ever had. definitely pushed me outside of my comfort zone in terms of narrative structure and it was so so worth it. excellent reflections on the AIDS crisis and the Lebanese civil war and in general, the types of tragedy so great they can only be described (mourned? reflected on?) through other tragedies of a similar caliber.
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