Description
De Niro's Game is the first novel by Lebanese author Rawi Hage.
Bassam and George are childhood best friends who have grown up on the Christian side of war-torn Beirut. Now on the verge of adulthood, they must choose whether to remain in the exhausted, corrupt city of their birth or to go into exile abroad, cut off from the only existence they have known.
Bassam chooses one path — obsessed with leaving Beirut, he embarks on a series of petty crimes to fund his escape to the West. Meanwhile, George amasses power in the underworld of the city, embracing a life of military service, organised crime, killing, and drugs. But their two paths inevitably collide, with explosive consequences. De Niro's Game is Rawi Hage's devastating, timely portrait of two young men and an entire city formed and deformed by war.
Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war. He lives in Montreal.
Endorsements
Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
"A large and unsettling talent" — Guardian
"A masterpiece . . . writing cannot really get much better" — Literary Review
"Hollywood noir meets opium dreams in a blasted landscape of war-wasted young lives" — Boston Globe
"The most subtly nuanced, psychologically compelling book about the corrosive effects of war to be written for a long time . . . The descriptions of the city are so skilful you can taste the dust in the air" — Financial Times