The Angel of History by Rabih Alameddine6/25/2023 Almaddine’s Prince of Darkness has a decided Miltonian inflection and acts on Jacob’s behalf in a way seemingly at odds with his popular perception. The saints may be a godsend, but Jacob’s greatest ally is a better know figure: Satan. As his peripatetic life takes him around the globe, Jacob learns to rely on the counsel and intercession of his motley crew of martyrs to help him navigate the various injustices and microaggressions that a queer person from the Arab world living in the United States encounters. Church orthodoxy notwithstanding, Jacob is as smitten with his saints as he is by submission, something he got a taste of at the brothel. It’s here, under Sœur Emmanuelle’s tutelage, that Jacob first learns about the Fourteen Holy Helpers, auxiliary saints that the church has moved away from. The son of a Yemeni prostitute and an absentee father, young Jacob is raised by a colorful cast of “aunties” at a Cairo brothel and, later, by a stern but subversive Catholic nun in Beirut. In Alameddine’s newest novel, the aftermath of a half-century of war, disease, religious strife, and sexual liberation has left a Middle Eastern San Francisco-based poet addled and on the verge of neurotic collapse. ‘The Angel of History’ by Rabih Alameddine
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