Kool AIDS: Umijeće ratovanja
An experimental, fragmentary, and autobiographical debut novel by a Lebanese-American writer and painter. Unconventional, emotionally brutal, and intellectually sharp, "Koolaids" paints a powerful portrait of loss and the search for meaning in the midst o
The work follows two major disasters in the 1980s and 1990s in parallel: the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco (which decimated the gay community) and the Lebanese civil war in Beirut. The author presents them as two equally senseless and devastating “wars” – one biological, the other political and military.
The main characters are a circle of friends and relatives (mostly gay men of Lebanese origin) who move between Beirut and San Francisco. The story is dominated by Mohammad, a painter and writer, whose voice is close to the author’s. The novel does not have a linear plot – it consists of diary entries, conversations, dreams, quotes, jokes, artistic references, criticism of the media and society, and fragments from the lives of characters who die of AIDS or are killed in the war.
Alameddine contrasts the coldness and cynicism of the Western response to AIDS (“gay plague”) with the horrors of the Lebanese war, mocking both societies. The book is full of dark humor, irony and provocation - the title combines the popular drink Kool-Aid (a symbol of the mass suicide in Jonestown) with Sun Tzu's "Art of War".
One copy is available
