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Última noche en el Guapa (NARRATIVA)
Cuando la parte de arriba del Guapa echa el cierre y la mayoría de los clientes se han ido, en el sótano del bar se enciende una luz roja que da paso al espectáculo...
Última noche en el Guapa narra un día en la vida de Rasa, un chico homosexual que vive en una ciudad cualquiera de un país árabe cualquiera y lucha por labrarse un futuro en medio de una situación política y social insostenible. Pero no es un día más en la vida de Rasa: Teta, su abuela y única familia, lo pilló anoche en la cama con otro hombre; su mejor amigo está desaparecido y esa misma noche está invitado a una boda que cambiará su vida para siempre.
A lo largo de esas veinticuatro horas, asistimos a un relato fascinante que nos sumerge en la vida de Rasa, desde sus recuerdos de infancia —marcados por la ausencia de sus padres y la figura autoritaria de su abuela— hasta su llegada a Estados Unidos pocos días antes de los atentados del 11S y su regreso a un país que comenzaba en ese momento a echarse a las calles. Última noche en el Guapa supone una búsqueda de identidad —de un joven, de un país, de una cultura— y un relato desgarrador sobre el aplastamiento de la Primavera Árabe y el auge del fundamentalismo político y religioso.
«Última noche en el Guapa convierte a Haddad en una voz capaz de narrar historias todavía no contadas sobre la realidad gay actual de una de las zonas más complejas del mundo.» Attitude Magazine
«Esta novela es increíble por ser a la vez sincera e inspiradora.» Book Riot
«Haddad confronta en su debut familia, identidad y política. Su prosa, evocadora y de tono cinematográfico, consigue ponerse a la altura de la sensibilidad que requiere el tratamiento de un tema tan sumamente complejo como es el de la homosexualidad en el mundo árabe.» Publisher’s Weekly
«Vibrante, torturada... sensual y cáustica, impregnada de humo y de sangre.» The New Yorker
«Un debut explosivo... Última noche en el Guapa ofrece un soplo de aire fresco al lema “Lo personal es político”.» The Guardian
«Haddad escribe como un Tenessee Williams árabe, llevado a partes iguales por la rabia y la compasión.» Nick Seeley, Cambodia Noir
«Altamente recomendable para aquellos lectores interesados en cuestiones sobre diversidad y Oriente Próximo.» Library Journal
339 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 8, 2016
204 people are currently reading
8861 people want to read
About the author
Saleem Haddad
8 books276 followersSaleem Haddad was born in Kuwait City to an Iraqi-German mother and a Palestinian-Lebanese father.
His first novel, Guapa, was published in 2016, receiving critical acclaim from The New Yorker, The Guardian, and others, and was awarded both a Stonewall Honour and the 2017 Polari First Book Prize.
He has also published a number of short stories, including for the Palestinian sci-fi anthology Palestine +100. He also writes for film and television; his directorial debut, Marco, premiered in March 2019 and was nominated for the 2019 Iris Prize for ‘Best British Short Film’. His work has been supported by institutions such as Yaddo and the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin.
He is currently based in Lisbon, with roots in London, Amman, and Beirut
His first novel, Guapa, was published in 2016, receiving critical acclaim from The New Yorker, The Guardian, and others, and was awarded both a Stonewall Honour and the 2017 Polari First Book Prize.
He has also published a number of short stories, including for the Palestinian sci-fi anthology Palestine +100. He also writes for film and television; his directorial debut, Marco, premiered in March 2019 and was nominated for the 2019 Iris Prize for ‘Best British Short Film’. His work has been supported by institutions such as Yaddo and the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin.
He is currently based in Lisbon, with roots in London, Amman, and Beirut
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 552 reviews
September 7, 2019
A raw, emotional novel that follows Rasa, a gay Arab man living in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. The novel begins with Rasa’s grandmother finding him in bed with another man and literally screaming in horror. For the rest of Guapa, we follow Rasa throughout a 24-hour period filled with political and personal unrest: both the uprising of the Arab Spring protests and the uprising of Rasa’s heart when he realizes he may never be with the man he loves. In interspersed flashbacks, we see Rasa’s tumultuous childhood growing up in a household rife with conflict, his time studying in the United States as a college student, as well as the development of his queer identity. By the novel’s end, we gain a deep sense of Rasa’s character, someone courageous and strong yet deeply troubled and hurt.
I loved this book because it details a queer experience so underrepresented in the gay literature, one of a man of color in a non-Western country. Haddad does a masterful job of detailing the culturally-bounded conflicts in Rasa’s life. He writes about Rasa’s youthful idealization of America followed by his disillusionment when he realizes the racism in our country, how Rasa sometimes struggles with feeling too Arab and other times struggles with feeling too American, and the multifaceted stigma he experiences as a gay Arab man. There’s such a real, painful, and powerful force to Saleem Haddad’s writing in Guapa, I really felt like I was with Rasa when he went through all of his challenges and traumas. Obviously as someone born and raised in the United States and as an Asian American, I will never know his lived experience exactly. Still, Haddad makes Rasa’s emotional pain so compelling and raw, I wanted to comfort him and hold him and give him a safe space to process. While it took me a little time to adjust to Haddad’s writing style, I so thoroughly appreciated how he held nothing back in his narrative voice and showed the true depth of Rasa’s feelings.
My only constructive critique of Guapa is that I felt that there were a lot of unresolved threads in Rasa’s character. So much happened to him: abandonment by his mother, borderline abusive/abusive behavior from his grandmother, having his heart broken by the man he loved, etc. I recognize my desire for more resolution or at least more internal growth and processing may stem from my bias as a therapist. I also recognize that Guapa gives us a snapshot of a very specific portion of Rasa’s life, so maybe the processing and healing will come later. Still, so much happened to him and I wanted just a bit more. (Also, maybe I just wanted to see him more fully get over Taymour, a noncommittal uncommunicative jerk who was never good enough for Rasa tbh, because of my own love for stories about getting over men who don’t deserve us. Anyway.)
Other aspects of Guapa I loved: Haddad having Rasa critique the United States and its unfettered capitalism, Rasa’s beautiful friendship with Maj, and overall intersectionality placed at the forefront of the novel. I would highly recommend this book to those interested in the experiences of queer men of color, who don’t mind a messy narrator who often throws himself into activism as a way to cope with his trauma and emotions. Guapa reminded me of Speak No Evil and Slant , two other great books I’ve read recently that center queer men of color, in addition to a couple of my favorites Picture Us in the Light and More Happy Than Not . I only hope for more queer people of color representation, please send any recommendations my way! And thank you to Saleem Haddad for writing this book.
I loved this book because it details a queer experience so underrepresented in the gay literature, one of a man of color in a non-Western country. Haddad does a masterful job of detailing the culturally-bounded conflicts in Rasa’s life. He writes about Rasa’s youthful idealization of America followed by his disillusionment when he realizes the racism in our country, how Rasa sometimes struggles with feeling too Arab and other times struggles with feeling too American, and the multifaceted stigma he experiences as a gay Arab man. There’s such a real, painful, and powerful force to Saleem Haddad’s writing in Guapa, I really felt like I was with Rasa when he went through all of his challenges and traumas. Obviously as someone born and raised in the United States and as an Asian American, I will never know his lived experience exactly. Still, Haddad makes Rasa’s emotional pain so compelling and raw, I wanted to comfort him and hold him and give him a safe space to process. While it took me a little time to adjust to Haddad’s writing style, I so thoroughly appreciated how he held nothing back in his narrative voice and showed the true depth of Rasa’s feelings.
My only constructive critique of Guapa is that I felt that there were a lot of unresolved threads in Rasa’s character. So much happened to him: abandonment by his mother, borderline abusive/abusive behavior from his grandmother, having his heart broken by the man he loved, etc. I recognize my desire for more resolution or at least more internal growth and processing may stem from my bias as a therapist. I also recognize that Guapa gives us a snapshot of a very specific portion of Rasa’s life, so maybe the processing and healing will come later. Still, so much happened to him and I wanted just a bit more. (Also, maybe I just wanted to see him more fully get over Taymour, a noncommittal uncommunicative jerk who was never good enough for Rasa tbh, because of my own love for stories about getting over men who don’t deserve us. Anyway.)
Other aspects of Guapa I loved: Haddad having Rasa critique the United States and its unfettered capitalism, Rasa’s beautiful friendship with Maj, and overall intersectionality placed at the forefront of the novel. I would highly recommend this book to those interested in the experiences of queer men of color, who don’t mind a messy narrator who often throws himself into activism as a way to cope with his trauma and emotions. Guapa reminded me of Speak No Evil and Slant , two other great books I’ve read recently that center queer men of color, in addition to a couple of my favorites Picture Us in the Light and More Happy Than Not . I only hope for more queer people of color representation, please send any recommendations my way! And thank you to Saleem Haddad for writing this book.
May 15, 2016
Guapa is well worth reading. There is an exuberance and ragged energy to the prose I admired. Rasa is a young gay man in an "unnamed Arab country" who is grappling with a complicated relationship, his grandmother, living a closeted life, and his place in the political turmoil his country is facing. There are many powerful observations throughout but at times, the novel was just so didactic, so, "let me teach you," and storytelling fell to the wayside. The plot also just sort of falls apart toward the end. Still, worth reading. A very good book with rough edges that are just fine.
March 16, 2016
Review can also be found in my blog: http://wp.me/p7a9pe-jh
Guapa is the kind of book I am always open to reading and also the kind of book I root for to succeed. When I hear about a new novel that illuminates the experiences of nonwhite, non-western LGBT people, I want to spread the word. So when I got a chance to read a copy of Guapa before release, I was thrilled!
The narrative follows Rasa, a young gay man who lives in an unnamed Arab country steeped in political turmoil. He returns from America with a college education that doesn’t appear to offer many benefits in his home country, and in the end joins a couple of friends in starting a small, floundering translation company. His mother ran away from an unhappy marriage long ago and his father has been dead for over a decade. This leaves his grandmother, Teta, as his only family and for years she was the moral compass through which Rasa saw the world. Unfortunately, Rasa soon discovered that living under Teta’s hyper-traditional regime was stifling.
Thankfully, Rasa had Guapa, the titular bar that he and some of his friends liked to frequent; it proved to be a sanctuary where men who love men and women who love women can be themselves in a world that doesn’t allow them to do either.
As the story begins, we meet Rasa soon after Teta finally uncovers his secret when she finds him in bed with another man. But it wasn’t just any man: it was Taymour, the love of his life and only source of happiness in his bleak existence. This discovery summons forth a strong sense of “eib,” or shame, hammered into him by his grandmother — the shame of doing something forbidden and the fear and anxiety that comes with wondering what other people will think. This idea of shame is a recurring theme throughout the novel. Ultimately, Rasa must either reject this notion or live a life devoted to avoiding his true self.
Although I enjoyed the novel overall, I never reached the point of genuinely caring for and understanding Rasa and the small cast of characters. I believe my feelings of detachment came from the vague and unnamed setting and political events that comprised the world of this novel.
The author has gone on to say in interviews that he purposefully set the story in unnamed Arab country because he didn’t want his novel to be seen as an anthropological study of one specific country and that the unknown nature of the setting would allow the story to take on a metaphorical nature. I understand and respect his idea. I also understand that as a person from a mixed racial background (his background is Palestinian, Muslim, Iraqi, Lebanese, German, and Christian), he knows what it’s like to not wholly belong to one place or country and Guapa appropriately reflects that feeling. However, as a reader I wanted to understand Rasa and his world on a deeper level. The unnamed Arab country experiencing vaguely described political turmoil never felt real to me and so I felt permanently detached from Rara’s story. I felt like a spectator to a narrative that never felt quite authentic, which was personally what I was looking for and didn’t allow me to enjoy the story fully.
There is much to like about Guapa as well. Chiefly, I enjoyed the sharp, eloquent, and fast-paced writing. The subject matter was also simultaneously refreshing and familiar– reading about the life and struggles of a young gay Arab man is not something I get to do every day, yet Rasa’s story is one that LGBT people can relate to. This novel also serves to further expand the idea of what it means to be gay, to be a gay man, and to be a gay man in a Muslim country, which is important work. For that, I am thankful to Saleem Haddad.
Guapa is the kind of book I am always open to reading and also the kind of book I root for to succeed. When I hear about a new novel that illuminates the experiences of nonwhite, non-western LGBT people, I want to spread the word. So when I got a chance to read a copy of Guapa before release, I was thrilled!
The narrative follows Rasa, a young gay man who lives in an unnamed Arab country steeped in political turmoil. He returns from America with a college education that doesn’t appear to offer many benefits in his home country, and in the end joins a couple of friends in starting a small, floundering translation company. His mother ran away from an unhappy marriage long ago and his father has been dead for over a decade. This leaves his grandmother, Teta, as his only family and for years she was the moral compass through which Rasa saw the world. Unfortunately, Rasa soon discovered that living under Teta’s hyper-traditional regime was stifling.
Thankfully, Rasa had Guapa, the titular bar that he and some of his friends liked to frequent; it proved to be a sanctuary where men who love men and women who love women can be themselves in a world that doesn’t allow them to do either.
As the story begins, we meet Rasa soon after Teta finally uncovers his secret when she finds him in bed with another man. But it wasn’t just any man: it was Taymour, the love of his life and only source of happiness in his bleak existence. This discovery summons forth a strong sense of “eib,” or shame, hammered into him by his grandmother — the shame of doing something forbidden and the fear and anxiety that comes with wondering what other people will think. This idea of shame is a recurring theme throughout the novel. Ultimately, Rasa must either reject this notion or live a life devoted to avoiding his true self.
Although I enjoyed the novel overall, I never reached the point of genuinely caring for and understanding Rasa and the small cast of characters. I believe my feelings of detachment came from the vague and unnamed setting and political events that comprised the world of this novel.
The author has gone on to say in interviews that he purposefully set the story in unnamed Arab country because he didn’t want his novel to be seen as an anthropological study of one specific country and that the unknown nature of the setting would allow the story to take on a metaphorical nature. I understand and respect his idea. I also understand that as a person from a mixed racial background (his background is Palestinian, Muslim, Iraqi, Lebanese, German, and Christian), he knows what it’s like to not wholly belong to one place or country and Guapa appropriately reflects that feeling. However, as a reader I wanted to understand Rasa and his world on a deeper level. The unnamed Arab country experiencing vaguely described political turmoil never felt real to me and so I felt permanently detached from Rara’s story. I felt like a spectator to a narrative that never felt quite authentic, which was personally what I was looking for and didn’t allow me to enjoy the story fully.
There is much to like about Guapa as well. Chiefly, I enjoyed the sharp, eloquent, and fast-paced writing. The subject matter was also simultaneously refreshing and familiar– reading about the life and struggles of a young gay Arab man is not something I get to do every day, yet Rasa’s story is one that LGBT people can relate to. This novel also serves to further expand the idea of what it means to be gay, to be a gay man, and to be a gay man in a Muslim country, which is important work. For that, I am thankful to Saleem Haddad.
April 9, 2017
3.5 stars
I was really rooting for Saleem Haddad's novel Guapa to deliver sometbing remarkable, and, for the most part, I wasn't disappointed. Though I'm not gay, or Arab, I had a feeling this story of a gay man in his late twenties dealing with the shame (or Quranic eib) attendant with his sexual urges, in an unnamed (but almost certainly an unstable post-'Arab Spring' Muslim-majority) nation was at times quite gripping. Half the story was told in flashback with our sexually-repressed protagonist Rasa coming to college in the United States and simultaneously becoming both more in touch with his sexuality and frustrated by his host country for its seeming anti-Arab stance against his home country (which little clues dropped here and there kept me imagining Syria, though I suppose his home could've been anywhere in the Middle East).
The other half of the story is a day in Rasa's life back at home (self-employed as an interpreter, often facilitating American journalists to conduct interviews with rebels hostile to his country's regime), hanging with his pals at an underground, slightly subversive disco named "Guapa", and contending with the possibility that his 'Teta' (grandmother) might've figured out that he is gay.
Not sure if it was because the timing was right or what, but I totally embraced this novel, even with some overt clunkiness of the "International Homophobia Is Bad!" message (although it saddens me that this novel brings to light that, thanks to religious zealotry both here and abroad, it's a message that must still be reiterated for a problem that isn't likely to go away anytime soon.) Overall: I was impressed with Haddad's effort here. I have a feeling we'll be seeing some great things from this guy in the future.
I was really rooting for Saleem Haddad's novel Guapa to deliver sometbing remarkable, and, for the most part, I wasn't disappointed. Though I'm not gay, or Arab, I had a feeling this story of a gay man in his late twenties dealing with the shame (or Quranic eib) attendant with his sexual urges, in an unnamed (but almost certainly an unstable post-'Arab Spring' Muslim-majority) nation was at times quite gripping. Half the story was told in flashback with our sexually-repressed protagonist Rasa coming to college in the United States and simultaneously becoming both more in touch with his sexuality and frustrated by his host country for its seeming anti-Arab stance against his home country (which little clues dropped here and there kept me imagining Syria, though I suppose his home could've been anywhere in the Middle East).
The other half of the story is a day in Rasa's life back at home (self-employed as an interpreter, often facilitating American journalists to conduct interviews with rebels hostile to his country's regime), hanging with his pals at an underground, slightly subversive disco named "Guapa", and contending with the possibility that his 'Teta' (grandmother) might've figured out that he is gay.
Not sure if it was because the timing was right or what, but I totally embraced this novel, even with some overt clunkiness of the "International Homophobia Is Bad!" message (although it saddens me that this novel brings to light that, thanks to religious zealotry both here and abroad, it's a message that must still be reiterated for a problem that isn't likely to go away anytime soon.) Overall: I was impressed with Haddad's effort here. I have a feeling we'll be seeing some great things from this guy in the future.
February 3, 2016
Few writers can describe stories of marginalization in the Middle East while simultaneously breaking away from stereotypes. Saleem has done that beautifully in his novel.
June 9, 2025
4.5 stars
Haddad gives us a tense twenty four hours with Rasa. And for us to get the Rasa we are seeing now he also gives us Rasa in the past so that we can understand how present Rasa came to be. So we see him grow up, loose his parents, go to America, come back, revolt, fall in love, make good and bad decisions, and now this day. The future is still open in front of him.
We see him dance that awkward dance we dance to fit in with the rest of the world. Most of the time falling out of step, not in line with the others or with ourselves, especially with the dictatorial conductor of this particular ballet, The President who rules over Rasa’s world, a world stuck between those two strange bedfellows terrorism and authoritarianism.
Through Rasa, Haddad explores many themes:
Roots - conflict between where you are coming from and where you are and where you wish to end up.
Alienation - Rejection at home because of his homosexuality. Rejection in America because he is an Arab (like Ngozi Adichie Ifemelu he discovers that he is Arab only when he lives in America)
Eib - Shame - What will people say - This being a concept discussed here in an Arabic context you would have thought that Eib was strictly tied in with Islam. But I can testify that it isn't. As an island we love to pretend that we are more catholic than the Pope and still our culture is built on 'What will people say' and our actions and decisions are subscribed by that. Maybe this was more so in my parents time and is decreasing with time but I can boldly say that my childhood was built around that and it is a struggle to jump off that particular train.
Home - staying in your city which will always be a part of you because you are built there or finding another place. Can you leave your city (culture, roots) behind? What if in the place where you end up you find a conflict between your new city and your old city? The majority of Americans are immigrants so anywhere in the world America decides to ‘intervene’ will effect a number of Americans who are originally from that part of the world. Any conflict/worry for a group of Americans will have it’s effect on the rest of America and in this world, at this time, that means it will affect the rest of the world in one way or another.
Note re conclusion.
Reading this book struck a note with me because Rasa’s city reminds me very much of my city, my culture. I also got to see another perspective on homosexuality and what it means for people like Rasa. Moreover, I got hints to underlying reasons for the strange malaise affecting many young ones, which leads them to the destructions of self and the destruction of many other innocent ones.
Guapa - means beautiful in Spanish
interview with Haddad on Muftah
interview with Haddad on thedailybeast
Haddad gives us a tense twenty four hours with Rasa. And for us to get the Rasa we are seeing now he also gives us Rasa in the past so that we can understand how present Rasa came to be. So we see him grow up, loose his parents, go to America, come back, revolt, fall in love, make good and bad decisions, and now this day. The future is still open in front of him.
We see him dance that awkward dance we dance to fit in with the rest of the world. Most of the time falling out of step, not in line with the others or with ourselves, especially with the dictatorial conductor of this particular ballet, The President who rules over Rasa’s world, a world stuck between those two strange bedfellows terrorism and authoritarianism.
Through Rasa, Haddad explores many themes:
Roots - conflict between where you are coming from and where you are and where you wish to end up.
Alienation - Rejection at home because of his homosexuality. Rejection in America because he is an Arab (like Ngozi Adichie Ifemelu he discovers that he is Arab only when he lives in America)
Eib - Shame - What will people say - This being a concept discussed here in an Arabic context you would have thought that Eib was strictly tied in with Islam. But I can testify that it isn't. As an island we love to pretend that we are more catholic than the Pope and still our culture is built on 'What will people say' and our actions and decisions are subscribed by that. Maybe this was more so in my parents time and is decreasing with time but I can boldly say that my childhood was built around that and it is a struggle to jump off that particular train.
Home - staying in your city which will always be a part of you because you are built there or finding another place. Can you leave your city (culture, roots) behind? What if in the place where you end up you find a conflict between your new city and your old city? The majority of Americans are immigrants so anywhere in the world America decides to ‘intervene’ will effect a number of Americans who are originally from that part of the world. Any conflict/worry for a group of Americans will have it’s effect on the rest of America and in this world, at this time, that means it will affect the rest of the world in one way or another.
Note re conclusion.
Reading this book struck a note with me because Rasa’s city reminds me very much of my city, my culture. I also got to see another perspective on homosexuality and what it means for people like Rasa. Moreover, I got hints to underlying reasons for the strange malaise affecting many young ones, which leads them to the destructions of self and the destruction of many other innocent ones.
Guapa - means beautiful in Spanish
interview with Haddad on Muftah
interview with Haddad on thedailybeast
February 3, 2017
My review of this book which I wrote for a magazine recently:
The Western vision of the queer Arab is undeniably bleak, and most often, it is a sensationalized slideshow of relentless suffering: bodies thrown from high rooftops, mass arrests, a public hanging. In Saleem Haddad’s debut novel Guapa, however, the most violently crucifying moments are not of stonings or communal exile, but rather the stabs of shame after a lover’s touch, and the terror of an eye staring out of a keyhole.
The novel follows Rasa – a gay Arab man living in an unnamed Middle-Eastern country – throughout a single day of his life. Working as an interpreter for Western journalists, he acts as a bridge between East and West – simultaneously, in doing so, he reveals a minefield of cultural misunderstanding and misinterpretation, and a futility of communication even language cannot diffuse. Bordering on mania, his fixation with language is not simply an occupation but a personal crusade, a battleground for identity, as he searches tirelessly for a definable selfhood, the most perfect and absolute classification: “gay”, “louti”, “sodomite”, “khawal”, none of these seem to fit for Rasa
Always hanging over him is the inescapable spectre of alienation, navigating life as a gay man in an Arab society; then, in flashbacks, as an Arab in a post-9/11 America; later, as an idealistic revolutionary among those who have given up on liberation; finally, as a parentless young man, on the verge of losing his lover Taymour.
Despite the importance of Rasa’s story, however, LGBT struggle is placed a much broader socio-political backdrop of national suffering, as a failed revolution unleashes a new wave of regime repression and extremist terror attacks. Rasa’s best friend Maj, resident drag-queen of the city’s underground gay club (the titular Guapa), tells him that the regime “preys […] on the downtrodden and oppressed, on the poor, on women and refugees and illegal immigrants”; he reminds him that they are the lucky ones, since they “speak fluent English” and live in the rich part of the city, making them “too costly to kill” despite their vilified sexual identity. Here, Haddad explores the multidimensional, often ambiguous, role of privilege, and the intense subjectivity of experience in a region that is often painting with a single brush.
Intertexuality plays a large role in Haddad’s novel. Scattered throughout Guapa are nods to works of seminal LGBT fiction, from Baldwin’s ‘Giovanni’s Room’ to Vidal’s ‘The City and the Pillar’, embedding the themes of his own novel into an established literary legacy.
Perhaps more interesting, nonetheless, is the way Guapa grapples with post-colonial theory, interweaving strands of thought from academics such as Joseph Massad, Amin Maalouf, even Foucault, into a debate about cultural identity, a theme that haunts the narrative as Rasa contemplates the implications of his own history. Is the notion of a ‘queer Arab’ simply a product of “the Western imagination exported onto the colonial world”? Is ‘queerness’ a rigidly Western structure imposed on the East? Is the pre-colonial experience of sexuality – fluid, chaotic, and free from classification – more desirable? As Haddad notes, in the Middle East “the notion of publicly coming out rings hollow in a culture where who you share your bed with is a private matter”, where homosexuality operates in a different cultural context, and where many have sex with the same gender without ever needing to label themselves as ‘gay’ or ‘bisexual’. Or, rather, is this simply a mythical delusion, one that pivots on the notion of a romanticized utopian past? Haddad never comes to a conclusive answer, but he raises many important questions.
In The Myth of Queer Arab Life, Haddad asks us:
“Who owns queer Arab bodies? Is it the authoritarian regimes who trample on queer bodies for moral legitimacy, the jihadists who burnish their religious credentials by tossing these bodies off the highest towers, the western human rights groups who enforce their own narratives to ‘save’ these bodies, [… or] the neoconservatives who shake dead queer bodies in front of their constituents to justify wars and occupations?”
Guapa is Haddad’s attempt to take back his body and the bodies of millions, to wrestle control over it and recontexualise it into a corpus of nuance, truth, and complexity. It remains a much need testimony of Arab self-representation and self-definition, deconstructing the delusion of a monolithic cultural experience, while defying the prevailing view of the Arab minority – helpless, silent, and waiting.
The Western vision of the queer Arab is undeniably bleak, and most often, it is a sensationalized slideshow of relentless suffering: bodies thrown from high rooftops, mass arrests, a public hanging. In Saleem Haddad’s debut novel Guapa, however, the most violently crucifying moments are not of stonings or communal exile, but rather the stabs of shame after a lover’s touch, and the terror of an eye staring out of a keyhole.
The novel follows Rasa – a gay Arab man living in an unnamed Middle-Eastern country – throughout a single day of his life. Working as an interpreter for Western journalists, he acts as a bridge between East and West – simultaneously, in doing so, he reveals a minefield of cultural misunderstanding and misinterpretation, and a futility of communication even language cannot diffuse. Bordering on mania, his fixation with language is not simply an occupation but a personal crusade, a battleground for identity, as he searches tirelessly for a definable selfhood, the most perfect and absolute classification: “gay”, “louti”, “sodomite”, “khawal”, none of these seem to fit for Rasa
Always hanging over him is the inescapable spectre of alienation, navigating life as a gay man in an Arab society; then, in flashbacks, as an Arab in a post-9/11 America; later, as an idealistic revolutionary among those who have given up on liberation; finally, as a parentless young man, on the verge of losing his lover Taymour.
Despite the importance of Rasa’s story, however, LGBT struggle is placed a much broader socio-political backdrop of national suffering, as a failed revolution unleashes a new wave of regime repression and extremist terror attacks. Rasa’s best friend Maj, resident drag-queen of the city’s underground gay club (the titular Guapa), tells him that the regime “preys […] on the downtrodden and oppressed, on the poor, on women and refugees and illegal immigrants”; he reminds him that they are the lucky ones, since they “speak fluent English” and live in the rich part of the city, making them “too costly to kill” despite their vilified sexual identity. Here, Haddad explores the multidimensional, often ambiguous, role of privilege, and the intense subjectivity of experience in a region that is often painting with a single brush.
Intertexuality plays a large role in Haddad’s novel. Scattered throughout Guapa are nods to works of seminal LGBT fiction, from Baldwin’s ‘Giovanni’s Room’ to Vidal’s ‘The City and the Pillar’, embedding the themes of his own novel into an established literary legacy.
Perhaps more interesting, nonetheless, is the way Guapa grapples with post-colonial theory, interweaving strands of thought from academics such as Joseph Massad, Amin Maalouf, even Foucault, into a debate about cultural identity, a theme that haunts the narrative as Rasa contemplates the implications of his own history. Is the notion of a ‘queer Arab’ simply a product of “the Western imagination exported onto the colonial world”? Is ‘queerness’ a rigidly Western structure imposed on the East? Is the pre-colonial experience of sexuality – fluid, chaotic, and free from classification – more desirable? As Haddad notes, in the Middle East “the notion of publicly coming out rings hollow in a culture where who you share your bed with is a private matter”, where homosexuality operates in a different cultural context, and where many have sex with the same gender without ever needing to label themselves as ‘gay’ or ‘bisexual’. Or, rather, is this simply a mythical delusion, one that pivots on the notion of a romanticized utopian past? Haddad never comes to a conclusive answer, but he raises many important questions.
In The Myth of Queer Arab Life, Haddad asks us:
“Who owns queer Arab bodies? Is it the authoritarian regimes who trample on queer bodies for moral legitimacy, the jihadists who burnish their religious credentials by tossing these bodies off the highest towers, the western human rights groups who enforce their own narratives to ‘save’ these bodies, [… or] the neoconservatives who shake dead queer bodies in front of their constituents to justify wars and occupations?”
Guapa is Haddad’s attempt to take back his body and the bodies of millions, to wrestle control over it and recontexualise it into a corpus of nuance, truth, and complexity. It remains a much need testimony of Arab self-representation and self-definition, deconstructing the delusion of a monolithic cultural experience, while defying the prevailing view of the Arab minority – helpless, silent, and waiting.
February 16, 2016
As a Western reader, I feel there is much about life in the Middle East that is still shrouded in mystery. Recently books like Excellent Daughters by Katherine Zoepf and The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg have allowed me a look at the lives of women in these countries but little has been written about the lives of gay men and women living in the Middle East.
Guapa by Saleem Haddad is a thought-provoking novel told from the viewpoint of Rasa, a gay man living in an unnamed Middle East country. The story opens as Teta, Rasa’s grandmother and the woman who raised him, discovers Rasa and his lover, Taymour, in bed together. Teta has instilled a sense of eib, shame, in Rasa and he has spent much of his life with that idea in his mind.
For the next 24 hours, as Rasa flees the apartment he shares with Teta to sort out the many conflicts he faces, we see glimpses of Rasa’s life. We learn that his mother, unhappy with being unable to live the life she wanted in this Arab country, left Rasa and his father. Soon after, Rasa’s father dies from cancer, leaving Rasa to be raised by Teta. Upon graduation from high school, Rasa attends college in America, and though initially lonely, he meets people who instill in him a sense of political activism that he takes with him when he returns home. We are introduced to his friend, Maj, a drag-queen and revolutionary who is committed to change in spite of being beaten and jailed for his lifestyle. We also see the sense of despair among his friends at Guapa, the bar where Rasa and his peers meet. Once hopeful about the street revolution they were fighting, it has become evident that the changes they had hoped for have vanished. The government remains strong and only the memory of hope remains.
As day becomes night, Rasa attends the wedding of his lover, Taymour, and meets friends from his past. There, too, he finds complacency among his friends and Rasa leaves the wedding questioning everything he thought he knew about himself, his relationship with Taymour, and the rest of the world. In fact, each encounter in that 24 hour period has led Rasa on a journey to discover who he is and how he has become the person he is. He needs only to know how he can move forward.
I loved this book and would highly recommend to anyone with an interest in reading about cultural differences but also those who know that loving someone transcends cultural taboos.
Thank you to NetGalley and to the author for allowing me an ARC of this novel.
Guapa by Saleem Haddad is a thought-provoking novel told from the viewpoint of Rasa, a gay man living in an unnamed Middle East country. The story opens as Teta, Rasa’s grandmother and the woman who raised him, discovers Rasa and his lover, Taymour, in bed together. Teta has instilled a sense of eib, shame, in Rasa and he has spent much of his life with that idea in his mind.
For the next 24 hours, as Rasa flees the apartment he shares with Teta to sort out the many conflicts he faces, we see glimpses of Rasa’s life. We learn that his mother, unhappy with being unable to live the life she wanted in this Arab country, left Rasa and his father. Soon after, Rasa’s father dies from cancer, leaving Rasa to be raised by Teta. Upon graduation from high school, Rasa attends college in America, and though initially lonely, he meets people who instill in him a sense of political activism that he takes with him when he returns home. We are introduced to his friend, Maj, a drag-queen and revolutionary who is committed to change in spite of being beaten and jailed for his lifestyle. We also see the sense of despair among his friends at Guapa, the bar where Rasa and his peers meet. Once hopeful about the street revolution they were fighting, it has become evident that the changes they had hoped for have vanished. The government remains strong and only the memory of hope remains.
As day becomes night, Rasa attends the wedding of his lover, Taymour, and meets friends from his past. There, too, he finds complacency among his friends and Rasa leaves the wedding questioning everything he thought he knew about himself, his relationship with Taymour, and the rest of the world. In fact, each encounter in that 24 hour period has led Rasa on a journey to discover who he is and how he has become the person he is. He needs only to know how he can move forward.
I loved this book and would highly recommend to anyone with an interest in reading about cultural differences but also those who know that loving someone transcends cultural taboos.
Thank you to NetGalley and to the author for allowing me an ARC of this novel.
January 19, 2020
Guapa was recommended to me by a guest on the Reading Envy Podcast a few years ago (thanks Yanira!) - Rasa is a young gay man in an unnamed Middle Eastern country on the brink of revolution. The story starts with his grandmother catching him in bed with another man and then goes back to tell the story of his parents, his American education (and how he struggled with Muslim and Arab identity in the states), and the underground bar Guapa which is a haven, most of the time.
I agree with some friends that we would have liked to know more of the story past the ending, and it could have been longer. But wanting more from a book is not a bad thing.
From his bio: "Saleem Haddad was born in Kuwait City to an Iraqi-German mother and a Palestinian-Lebanese father. He has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières and other international organisations in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, and Egypt." I can see why he wanted to set this in an "unnamed Arab country" because his experience is itself so varied.
I agree with some friends that we would have liked to know more of the story past the ending, and it could have been longer. But wanting more from a book is not a bad thing.
From his bio: "Saleem Haddad was born in Kuwait City to an Iraqi-German mother and a Palestinian-Lebanese father. He has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières and other international organisations in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, and Egypt." I can see why he wanted to set this in an "unnamed Arab country" because his experience is itself so varied.
July 9, 2023
A stressful book to read because it reminds me of personal horrors — the all consuming fear that the world will collapse if one's darkest secret becomes known.
Much of the world, for one reason or another, lives with this stress buried in their bodies and souls.
All of this to say that this intimate powerful novel can be a challenge to read because of the jagged experience of sharp edges buried in tender recesses.
Much of the world, for one reason or another, lives with this stress buried in their bodies and souls.
All of this to say that this intimate powerful novel can be a challenge to read because of the jagged experience of sharp edges buried in tender recesses.
June 16, 2016
I saw a quote a few days ago: “The Arab world is as complex and as diverse and messed up and great as anywhere else in the world” – from Hamed Sinno, singer for a well-known Arab band called Mashrou Leila. He said this to CNN as he’s been asked to comment a lot recently given that he’s a fairly “visible” gay Arab born to a Muslim family. The quote was telling as it was a follow up to his observation that “white singers” are never asked to explain their culture, but Arabs are usually asked to speak collectively in Western contexts.
This idea of the generalized other is one of the many themes in this book. I picked it up and started reading it just one day before the attacks in Orlando, which now has many examining homosexuality and its relation to Islam, religion, the Middle East, and even conservatism in American contexts. It’s remarkable when even the director of CAIR in the US speaks openly about homophobia and Islamophobia coming from the same place of oppression.
Haddad’s story of Rasa resonated on a number of levels, but particularly around those of identity, authenticity and alienation. Identity in the sense that as Rasa begins to discover his true self he’s faced with the corresponding knowledge that he doesn’t fit anywhere – he’s restricted in the West as an Arab and in the Arab world as a homosexual. As to the authentic, it’s interesting to note that those who are pushed to the margins in society are normally the most adept at seeing through bullshit. Rasa’s politics, social standing and even relationship with his family shows how tired he is of those who remove the soul of the human from what it means to be alive. From his anger at the abuses of government to his contempt for the social displays of the upper classes we return to this idea that all oppression is interconnected and those who feel it in one respect can (and should) empathize with those who genuinely experience it anywhere.
Guapa takes place in an unnamed Arab city, but it has the feeling of Amman combined with the politics of Cairo. Highly recommended read on a number of levels.
This idea of the generalized other is one of the many themes in this book. I picked it up and started reading it just one day before the attacks in Orlando, which now has many examining homosexuality and its relation to Islam, religion, the Middle East, and even conservatism in American contexts. It’s remarkable when even the director of CAIR in the US speaks openly about homophobia and Islamophobia coming from the same place of oppression.
Haddad’s story of Rasa resonated on a number of levels, but particularly around those of identity, authenticity and alienation. Identity in the sense that as Rasa begins to discover his true self he’s faced with the corresponding knowledge that he doesn’t fit anywhere – he’s restricted in the West as an Arab and in the Arab world as a homosexual. As to the authentic, it’s interesting to note that those who are pushed to the margins in society are normally the most adept at seeing through bullshit. Rasa’s politics, social standing and even relationship with his family shows how tired he is of those who remove the soul of the human from what it means to be alive. From his anger at the abuses of government to his contempt for the social displays of the upper classes we return to this idea that all oppression is interconnected and those who feel it in one respect can (and should) empathize with those who genuinely experience it anywhere.
Guapa takes place in an unnamed Arab city, but it has the feeling of Amman combined with the politics of Cairo. Highly recommended read on a number of levels.
September 19, 2025
September 2025
TikTok video recommendation
Editing my review to add a new video I made about this great book - 9 years later it still holds up!
Review from 2016
I don't write reviews lately. When I finish a book, life is so fast-paced that I don't find the time to think deeply about it and try to express my feelings toward it. But this one was different.
After reading a bunch of Stephen King books in a row, I saw this one on a Buzzfeed Newsletters about books to read in 2016. I picked it up and started reading it.
And I was really touched by it. As a person who knows almost nothing about the middle eastern crisis and the Arabic world in general, this book was a very good general insight of that and the life of a gay man in that environment. It was well written, and at times the analogies were very deep and touching.
It had an open ending but I really liked the final scenes and was glued to the book. I feel like the story of Rasa will keep popping up in my mind as my daily life unfolds.
5/5 *
TikTok video recommendation
Editing my review to add a new video I made about this great book - 9 years later it still holds up!
Review from 2016
I don't write reviews lately. When I finish a book, life is so fast-paced that I don't find the time to think deeply about it and try to express my feelings toward it. But this one was different.
After reading a bunch of Stephen King books in a row, I saw this one on a Buzzfeed Newsletters about books to read in 2016. I picked it up and started reading it.
And I was really touched by it. As a person who knows almost nothing about the middle eastern crisis and the Arabic world in general, this book was a very good general insight of that and the life of a gay man in that environment. It was well written, and at times the analogies were very deep and touching.
It had an open ending but I really liked the final scenes and was glued to the book. I feel like the story of Rasa will keep popping up in my mind as my daily life unfolds.
5/5 *
July 7, 2020
Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.
Reading the debut novel *Guapa*, I was reminded of a rose. The narrative, which essentially takes place over the course of a single day, unfolds like that budded flower. Memories peel back like petals, and as we read on, we sink more deeply into the narrative of Rasa, a young queer man in an unnamed Middle Eastern town. After his grandmother peeks through the keyhole of his bedroom and finds him with his lover, he must come to terms with an identity he no longer wants to keep hidden.
This is the kind of coming-of-age novel I adore, one that examines "the child in the man." The narrative voice is intimate and, holy hell, scarily accurate. I am excited to see how Haddad will grow as a storyteller because the voice is spot on! Fans of the recent queer novel *Swimming in the Dark* will do well to revisit *Guapa*. I'm so glad I did! I feel a beautiful ache.
Also, although this novel is a few years old, it speaks to this very moment of revolution and protest, proving to me how essential it is to embrace our identities if we are going to leave a mark on the world.
4.5 stars, rounded up
Reading the debut novel *Guapa*, I was reminded of a rose. The narrative, which essentially takes place over the course of a single day, unfolds like that budded flower. Memories peel back like petals, and as we read on, we sink more deeply into the narrative of Rasa, a young queer man in an unnamed Middle Eastern town. After his grandmother peeks through the keyhole of his bedroom and finds him with his lover, he must come to terms with an identity he no longer wants to keep hidden.
This is the kind of coming-of-age novel I adore, one that examines "the child in the man." The narrative voice is intimate and, holy hell, scarily accurate. I am excited to see how Haddad will grow as a storyteller because the voice is spot on! Fans of the recent queer novel *Swimming in the Dark* will do well to revisit *Guapa*. I'm so glad I did! I feel a beautiful ache.
Also, although this novel is a few years old, it speaks to this very moment of revolution and protest, proving to me how essential it is to embrace our identities if we are going to leave a mark on the world.
4.5 stars, rounded up
did-not-finish
April 5, 2019This one just wasn’t for me. I found the writing quite annoying, overly didactic, and whiny. Such an important story, but not told in a way that worked for me at all. Bailed just shy of page 40.
May 1, 2019
Guapa is an interesting book, because it is not set in a named country, which I think was a smart move on the author's part, and yet, it is very specific about Muslim culture. The story is told in a 24 hour frame, though fleshed out considerably with flashbacks, which add a lot of roundness to the protagonist. I did feel that all the other characters remained a little hazy, but maybe that was intentional. This book reminded me a lot of Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, which has stayed in my mind a good while after I read it. I imagine I won't be quick to forget Guapa either. It's a thought provoking book and impressive as a debut!
Find more reviews and bookish fun at http://www.princessandpen.com
Find more reviews and bookish fun at http://www.princessandpen.com
June 28, 2018
There are books that enter my life and humble me so thoroughly that I don't feel like my voice has a right to review them. So I won't attempt that. Know that this book broke my heart, enlightened me, and like almost no other book I have read lately........put me so solidly in my female/cis/liberal/White/American place and reminded me just how little I have to say about the issues put forth in this story.
July 24, 2024
This didn’t quite reach its full potential. The book starts off with a bang. A young Arab gay man is caught in bed with his lover by his grandmother. Things get amped up from there. Social situations arise which affect those closest to him, and there’s a political conflict going on in the unnamed Arab country he lives in. Times are not easy for our main protagonist.
I expected this book to set off fireworks, instead it fizzled into a finished product that was quite tepid. In ways, it was just a generic gay novel. It didn’t do anything all that interesting with any of its themes: sexual longing, closeted homosexuality, political calamity. These explorations were either by the numbers or thinly drawn.
All the right ingredients were there, it’s the finesse that was lacking. The storytelling was almost lifeless, focusing more on teaching me something rather than making me feel it; it had as much soul as an instruction manual.
I wouldn’t have guessed any of this at the start (it really did have a propulsive start), but for whatever reason Haddad decided to turn the heat off.
I expected this book to set off fireworks, instead it fizzled into a finished product that was quite tepid. In ways, it was just a generic gay novel. It didn’t do anything all that interesting with any of its themes: sexual longing, closeted homosexuality, political calamity. These explorations were either by the numbers or thinly drawn.
All the right ingredients were there, it’s the finesse that was lacking. The storytelling was almost lifeless, focusing more on teaching me something rather than making me feel it; it had as much soul as an instruction manual.
I wouldn’t have guessed any of this at the start (it really did have a propulsive start), but for whatever reason Haddad decided to turn the heat off.
September 11, 2022
I have no words. This book was everything I never knew I needed.
April 21, 2016
A really authentic read that I couldn't recommend more. Rasa is a deeply dimensional character and the novel explores many subjects from his very unique perspective. I've been looking for a novel with a gay male protagonist that feels genuine; this is not a dramatic flair-up of carefully hand-picked events and chance meetings. This feels real.
Everyone is given a set of semi-random choices in life; everyone makes those choices and finds themselves on a path that was undeniably self-directed. When so many factors are outside of one's control, how do we grow into the people we want to be? How do we shrug off the cultural shame and regrets of our past and present lives and move forward? And is it possible to then bind your life to another's and expect to still be able to grow in an environment that imprisons us and holds our loved ones as hostages?
Beautiful debut.
Structurally, there may have been a few places that felt forced (mainly periods of flash-backs etc), but the story is a meandering examination of the questions above with incredibly believable characters and emotional depth. So glad I picked this one up.
Everyone is given a set of semi-random choices in life; everyone makes those choices and finds themselves on a path that was undeniably self-directed. When so many factors are outside of one's control, how do we grow into the people we want to be? How do we shrug off the cultural shame and regrets of our past and present lives and move forward? And is it possible to then bind your life to another's and expect to still be able to grow in an environment that imprisons us and holds our loved ones as hostages?
Beautiful debut.
Structurally, there may have been a few places that felt forced (mainly periods of flash-backs etc), but the story is a meandering examination of the questions above with incredibly believable characters and emotional depth. So glad I picked this one up.
July 29, 2017
Guapa is actually awful from its very beginning. It starts with the main character waking up and feeling ashamed. He spends the entire book, in fact, feeling ashamed, and by the time he finally, finally does something about his feelings at the very end of the book, I already hated the character so much that I didn't care. The main character, Rasa, is a young man who spends basically the entirety of the novel unhappy, complaining about how difficult his life is. It is true, of course, that much of his situation is difficult – he lives in a country run by a corrupt and violent political regime – but most of the character's situation is created by choices the character made himself, and so his whining fell on this reader's deaf ears.
The worst part about Guapa is that the character is completely inept at analyzing himself. He seems to think that all of his choices make sense, that all of the things he does are the good or reasonable things to do. He only does one or two really awful things in the book, but he is not at all self-reflexive about either of those things. He just goes on blithely believing himself to be a good guy making sensible decisions. Without some sense of the character learning something or feeling sorry for his actions or trying to do something to make up for his behavior, I found myself unable to forgive him, and ended up not rooting for him.
The other main character in the book is Rasa's grandmother Teta, whom the author actively detests. She is an evil woman who torments her grandson, daughter in law, maid, and son. The novelist truly hates her, including tiny details – like the fact that she cheats at bridge – seemingly for no reason other than to increase her villainy. The novelist hates this character, but for some reason he does not let his narrator hate her. So the narrator continually tells us all of the awful things this woman has done, but never actually seems affected by those things and remains loyal to this terrible person.
I should also say that the book is badly – sometimes even laughably – written. There are places when the characters are utterly cartoony, so that it becomes clear that the novelist is contemptuous of them, even though a book pretending to be about love would have been well served by a more generous gaze toward these characters. This is especially true in Parts II and III, in which the characters Rasa meets really only serve as narrative functions on which to project the narrator's fantasies. The novelist does occasionally move into making pronouncements about the world, but when the narrator (who can't figure out his own life one bit) makes these apparently universal claims about love or politics or family or religion, it is difficult not to scoff. This person who does not understand his own family or love life is supposed to produce interesting philosophies for the rest of us? No thanks.
This is also an unrelenting downer of a book. Even the fun sections of the book are seen through the character's shame about having fun, so there is no let-up at all from Guapa's misery. The only moments I really enjoyed in the book were when Rasa's friends Basma or Maj told him that he is making bad decisions and choosing his own unhappiness.
I loathed this book. It's exactly the kind of book about gay people that straight people love, where sexuality itself is a problem that the central character has to overcome somehow, where the homophobes in the book are easy to spot and easily overcome. Guapa always chooses simplistic portraits over complex ones, and repeatedly treats its characters with contempt rather than with the sympathy they deserve. I honestly can't believe anyone enjoyed reading this.
The worst part about Guapa is that the character is completely inept at analyzing himself. He seems to think that all of his choices make sense, that all of the things he does are the good or reasonable things to do. He only does one or two really awful things in the book, but he is not at all self-reflexive about either of those things. He just goes on blithely believing himself to be a good guy making sensible decisions. Without some sense of the character learning something or feeling sorry for his actions or trying to do something to make up for his behavior, I found myself unable to forgive him, and ended up not rooting for him.
The other main character in the book is Rasa's grandmother Teta, whom the author actively detests. She is an evil woman who torments her grandson, daughter in law, maid, and son. The novelist truly hates her, including tiny details – like the fact that she cheats at bridge – seemingly for no reason other than to increase her villainy. The novelist hates this character, but for some reason he does not let his narrator hate her. So the narrator continually tells us all of the awful things this woman has done, but never actually seems affected by those things and remains loyal to this terrible person.
I should also say that the book is badly – sometimes even laughably – written. There are places when the characters are utterly cartoony, so that it becomes clear that the novelist is contemptuous of them, even though a book pretending to be about love would have been well served by a more generous gaze toward these characters. This is especially true in Parts II and III, in which the characters Rasa meets really only serve as narrative functions on which to project the narrator's fantasies. The novelist does occasionally move into making pronouncements about the world, but when the narrator (who can't figure out his own life one bit) makes these apparently universal claims about love or politics or family or religion, it is difficult not to scoff. This person who does not understand his own family or love life is supposed to produce interesting philosophies for the rest of us? No thanks.
This is also an unrelenting downer of a book. Even the fun sections of the book are seen through the character's shame about having fun, so there is no let-up at all from Guapa's misery. The only moments I really enjoyed in the book were when Rasa's friends Basma or Maj told him that he is making bad decisions and choosing his own unhappiness.
I loathed this book. It's exactly the kind of book about gay people that straight people love, where sexuality itself is a problem that the central character has to overcome somehow, where the homophobes in the book are easy to spot and easily overcome. Guapa always chooses simplistic portraits over complex ones, and repeatedly treats its characters with contempt rather than with the sympathy they deserve. I honestly can't believe anyone enjoyed reading this.
June 20, 2016
A solidly-written book with a post-colonial snap. But the most intriguing aspect is the voice of a gay man in an unnamed Arab country as he grapples with love and his society. It's bittersweet. The book offers a fresh voice and Haddad has something to say, especially in the context of the Arab Spring and the protests Rasa, the main character, makes both in the said country and when he lived through 9/11 in the US, a time when he gained a grasp of his Arabness.
I look forward to future works from the author has he gains further footing as an author.
A favorite quote: "I remember being surprised at how tall his father was, but like Taymour he was very handsome. The way he held himself, his gestures and manners of speech, reminded me so much of Taymour that I fell in love with him even more, because I realized I was not just falling in love with Taymour but also with generations of him that connect through history, traits that had been passed down from one generation to the next. I was in love with his ancestry that stretched out for centuries."
I'll key an eye out for this author's next pieces of writing.
I look forward to future works from the author has he gains further footing as an author.
A favorite quote: "I remember being surprised at how tall his father was, but like Taymour he was very handsome. The way he held himself, his gestures and manners of speech, reminded me so much of Taymour that I fell in love with him even more, because I realized I was not just falling in love with Taymour but also with generations of him that connect through history, traits that had been passed down from one generation to the next. I was in love with his ancestry that stretched out for centuries."
I'll key an eye out for this author's next pieces of writing.
December 11, 2020
This has to be one of the best books I have read this year. Deft in its storytelling and rich in its pain, this is a debut novel that demands to be read, loved, and gifted. This is the book to all of us who think ‘diversity’ is merely a tag on our profile. To all of us who think we ‘know’ the human condition. To all of us who think that love is a shape to be constrained in our thoughts, and not our heart.
I was lost in its world. I think I emerged with a daze. And a fierce desire to reimagine this world of ours with kindness, beauty, and so much love.
I was lost in its world. I think I emerged with a daze. And a fierce desire to reimagine this world of ours with kindness, beauty, and so much love.
February 13, 2019
Guapa is an interesting novel with a strong humanitarian message. Part I opens with the central crisis: Rasa is discovered in bed with his lover Taymour, much to the disgust of his grandmother, the voice of eib/shame. A three year liaison meets the light of day. Ultimately, this is a novel about shame. Part II backtracks to investigate Rasa's life abroad when he felt the shame of being Arab. Part III brings the novel into the present with the full force of shame on Rasa's head: at Taymor's wedding, he realises that he is a double outlaw, cut off from community by being gay, and by being cut off from community so he is cut off from his Arab identity. Part II of the novel seems more of a technical device than anything-- it delays the final tragedy. Unfortunately, it is not as compelling as Parts I and III. Most of the writing strikes with a fresh, resonant voice, but there are a few sections where Haddad relies on the emotional world of Abdullah Taia; and these come across as derivative. Overall, Guapa is a deeply felt and very significant novel by an Arab gay writer, one who writes with compassion and sensitivity.
Read
September 23, 2023I was smitten with GUAPA, a queer Arab Spring novel. Haddad layered the personal and the political so much that it became impossible to disentangle Rasa's life from the nation's. As Rasa navigates his queerness, Arabness, and revolutionary politics in both the U.S. and his home country—always stuck between one eib (shame) and another—the nation, too, finds itself at war between the eibs of authoritarianism and Islamism. Haddad's character is always trying to resolve the binaries he's caught up in queerly: "I feel stuck between everything...It is causing me too many problems. Instead I wish I were a cloud..." (220). The prose didn't often do more than get the job done (it was only distractingly overwrought in a couple spots at the end), but I loved this book for its characters and the conflicts they were, with Haddad's sure hand, struggling through.
April 27, 2016
This book is so earnest and sincere in its effort, but I didn't love it. The writing was simply not very good--so many similes, so many unnecessary explanations of symbols and metaphors, so much telling instead of showing. Also, there's just too much going on here. I felt like the multiple story lines were either undercooked or too long, and the book would have benefited from a tighter focus. But again, the content is obviously meaningful, and the author's passion for the subject is clear. The book had its moments of cleverness and insight, to be sure, but the whole thing just needed a lot more editing.
January 24, 2016
Guapa is a great book. Above all else it is a story of marginalisation, of how in all its forms marginalisation is one shared malaise. And yet the author doesn't shy away from unpicking how those suffering one or more kinds of oppression, instead of forging common bonds, all too often themselves play a part in the marginalisation of others. This is one of several tragic layers in a story often told with bitter wit, about a man, Rassa, and the society in which he lives, both of whom seem on the brink of a future that never quite seems destined to arrive. Highly recommended!
August 12, 2017
I loved this book and would highly recommend to anyone with an interest in reading about cultural differences. And anyone who has loved. I particularly enjoyed this reading as a Westerner; it reminded me that other parts of the world are vastly different from my normal, everyday life and experiences.
March 6, 2021
One Last Drink at Guapa invites us to view the world through the eyes of Rasa, a gay Arab man living in an unnamed Arab country, set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring. Over the course of 24 hours, we are privy to Rasa's struggles with the regime, his identity, and his fervent wish to bridge the two in the hope of living in a more tolerant country, where for a man to love and sleep with another man is not
haram
, and defying the regime is not fraught with danger.
The story begins with Rasa's grandmother peering through a keyhole, finding him in bed with another man, and screaming bloody murder. The rest of the day pans out in a series of episodes, present interspersed with past, and the reader follows Rasa as he leaves his house in a state of consternation, wondering if he will ever be able to talk with his grandmother about what she saw. In the meantime, under the directive of the current President, Guapa, the eponymous bar has been raided and sealed off to the public - this is that rare space in the city where queer folx can be themselves, where Rasa inhabits his identity without it feeling like a second skin, and where he meets the man who will change his life.
Over the course of the story, we begin to understand Rasa's complicated relationship with Teta, his grandmother, who raised him in the absence of his parents, his turmoil during his studies in the U.S. of A where he experiences the two strong forces of his sexual identity and the racism that others him as an Arab, and his insistence on substantiating the relationship he shares with Taymour, the man his grandmother caught him in bed with. At the end of the story, we are left with the idea of Rasa as a man who must make and has made difficult and bitter choices in his life, but we are hopeful that he steps into the future with a sense of positivity.
This book resonated with me because of the parallels I could draw between Rasa's country and mine. Homosexuality was decriminalised in India as late as 2018, and trans folx are still being denied their rights. How does one live out one's queerness within an oppressive nation-state? One seeks out oases such as Guapa, where for a few fleeting moments, one can truly shine through.
At the end of the book, I found myself not really able to blame any of the characters for Rasa's situation, and yet all of them were perhaps to blame in some way - we are shaped by our circumstances, after all. I would have loved to know more about Rasa's parents, especially his mother, but (and here is where the book ends and I extrapolate) I am hopeful his relationship with his mother will work out just fine. All he needs is time. All anyone needs is time, really.
I would recommend this to everyone. If you identify as queer and are at present unable to express yourself freely, here's to you - it will get better. Just give it time.
(Also, infinitely grateful to Saleem Haddad for introducing me to the mellifluous Fairuz and the orotund Umm Kalthoum)
The story begins with Rasa's grandmother peering through a keyhole, finding him in bed with another man, and screaming bloody murder. The rest of the day pans out in a series of episodes, present interspersed with past, and the reader follows Rasa as he leaves his house in a state of consternation, wondering if he will ever be able to talk with his grandmother about what she saw. In the meantime, under the directive of the current President, Guapa, the eponymous bar has been raided and sealed off to the public - this is that rare space in the city where queer folx can be themselves, where Rasa inhabits his identity without it feeling like a second skin, and where he meets the man who will change his life.
Over the course of the story, we begin to understand Rasa's complicated relationship with Teta, his grandmother, who raised him in the absence of his parents, his turmoil during his studies in the U.S. of A where he experiences the two strong forces of his sexual identity and the racism that others him as an Arab, and his insistence on substantiating the relationship he shares with Taymour, the man his grandmother caught him in bed with. At the end of the story, we are left with the idea of Rasa as a man who must make and has made difficult and bitter choices in his life, but we are hopeful that he steps into the future with a sense of positivity.
This book resonated with me because of the parallels I could draw between Rasa's country and mine. Homosexuality was decriminalised in India as late as 2018, and trans folx are still being denied their rights. How does one live out one's queerness within an oppressive nation-state? One seeks out oases such as Guapa, where for a few fleeting moments, one can truly shine through.
At the end of the book, I found myself not really able to blame any of the characters for Rasa's situation, and yet all of them were perhaps to blame in some way - we are shaped by our circumstances, after all. I would have loved to know more about Rasa's parents, especially his mother, but (and here is where the book ends and I extrapolate) I am hopeful his relationship with his mother will work out just fine. All he needs is time. All anyone needs is time, really.
I would recommend this to everyone. If you identify as queer and are at present unable to express yourself freely, here's to you - it will get better. Just give it time.
(Also, infinitely grateful to Saleem Haddad for introducing me to the mellifluous Fairuz and the orotund Umm Kalthoum)
March 28, 2016
This is a really impressive novel. I can't think of the last book that I've read that's so full of turmoil--romantic, interpersonal, familial, and political. Rasa's struggle, which seems to grow in magnitude as the reader learns more about him, is not finished by the end of this book, but the novel has gotten across the complexity and the sheer thorniness of the many challenges that he faces. Rasa is a man who has had it with the pretense that society requires of us--whether around being an Arab or being a gay man--and becomes increasingly ready to break the rules, to call bulls#$% on the restrictions that he cannot stand. His character is a vulnerable, grumpy, complaining, angry mess, and I loved him for it. For all the issues that this book describes that I haven't had to deal with in my own life, the narrative made me identify with him the more. I wanted to comfort this narrator; he was facing challenges I might be too weak to withstand.
This book's representation of politics was also intriguing. It gets across the cruel outcome of the "Arab Spring" and optimism that it engendered, while also indicating that the political options are so limited in the imagined country of this novel that they come, at times, to resemble the powerlessness of a closeted relationship. Rasa's loves and friendships can't be divorced from the environment in which they are formed, and the bumpy ride that is the last 100 pages of this novel is marked by military violence and civilian deaths.
There are points in the book where I wasn't exactly blown away by the style (sometimes in the interactions between Taymour and Rasa the wording seemed repetitive), but _Guapa_'s overall brute emotional force is something that I won't forget. I think just about everyone should read this, but obviously folks with an interesting in queer literature will be the best served. Please check it out and let me know what you thought...meanwhile, can we have Saleem Haddad come and speak at my school!?!
This book's representation of politics was also intriguing. It gets across the cruel outcome of the "Arab Spring" and optimism that it engendered, while also indicating that the political options are so limited in the imagined country of this novel that they come, at times, to resemble the powerlessness of a closeted relationship. Rasa's loves and friendships can't be divorced from the environment in which they are formed, and the bumpy ride that is the last 100 pages of this novel is marked by military violence and civilian deaths.
There are points in the book where I wasn't exactly blown away by the style (sometimes in the interactions between Taymour and Rasa the wording seemed repetitive), but _Guapa_'s overall brute emotional force is something that I won't forget. I think just about everyone should read this, but obviously folks with an interesting in queer literature will be the best served. Please check it out and let me know what you thought...meanwhile, can we have Saleem Haddad come and speak at my school!?!
April 6, 2016
I really enjoyed reading Saleem Haddad's novel, Guapa. Like my novel, God in Pink, it exposes the readers to the issue of queerness in the Arab world. The book focuses on Rasa, a journalist working in a translating company with Basma, his colleague and friend. He lives with his Teta, his grandmother and he is caught in a complex world, where he must confront his eib or shame, a recurring theme in the novel. I really admire Haddad's beautiful writing. He has a gift for words and I really loved Rasa's relationship with Teta; it was very well developed throughout the novel. Although Haddad intentionally avoids naming the country that the novel is set to protect LGBT people, I really felt that the novel is set in Lebanon. The political aspect was portrayed in details and I admire Haddad for that. The novel is titled, Guapa after a night-club set in the book; at times, I wanted more scenes in the club and more development of Maj character, who fascinates me a lot. I really wanted to know more of him. Also, Haddad's portrayal of America seems to be one dimensional in the sense that some of the characters were anonymous and the characters in America are unlikeable. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed a lot of moments in the novel, at times I laughed, at times I empathized with Rasa, other times I felt pushed away by his anger at life. In the end, it was a well-written novel and I congratulate Mr. Haddad and I look forward to his future works. He's super talented and deserves all the recognition he gets.
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