Montreal novelist arrives at U of T with awards in tow
Published: January 15, 2016
Rawi Hage, the Jack McLelland writer-in-residence at the department of English, has uprooted himself from Montreal to Toronto for the 2016 spring term.
Such movement is nothing new to Hage, who grew up in war-torn Beirut and Cyprus, left for New York City at 20 and relocated to Montreal a decade later to work and study.
“Like many Canadians, I have a dual identity,” Hage said.
In Montreal Hage studied photography and visual arts at Dawson College, Concordia University and the Université du Québec à Montréal. The city he now calls home is where his successful writing career began.
“I wrote something and someone said, ‘You have a voice, keep on writing,’ so I kept writing,” Hage said. “Writing gave me confidence and eventually a bit of financial security.”
Hage exploded onto the literary scene in 2006 with his first novel, De Niro’s Game, a tale about living in a war-torn country written in a lyrical, visual style. It won Quebec’s Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the McAuslan First Book Prize, as well as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2008. In 2006 it was shortlisted for both the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award.
His second novel, Cockroach, winner of the 2008 MacLennan Prize, offers a fantastical look at the immigrant experience. It, too, was shortlisted for numerous prizes and was chosen by CBC Radio as its 2014 Canada Reads selection.
Hage’s third novel, Carnival, was published in 2013. He hopes to finish his fourth, on the subjects of death and burial, a work he hopes to have finished when he leaves U of T in April.
“The last couple of years, I have lost so many friends and relatives that it made me think about death,” Hage explained. “Literature is almost always about death, but this time, I’m admitting it.”
The University of Toronto has been lucky to snag him for a term on campus where he will be teaching a weekly writing workshop to 14 students. More than 50 applied. Hage chose the participants solely on the quality of two pages of submitted writing.
“I’m excited, but a bit nervous,” Hage admitted. “I’m not a professor or a teacher.
“We’ll discuss writing and have exchanges. I’ll try to direct the class and also give my opinion. I want to discuss things beyond writing and the methodologies of writing. Writing has a wider side that is experiential and intellectual and includes the emotions the writer has to deal with.”
Hage is eager to portray writing to his students as it is, “not at is perceived, not as the romantic notion of being a writer.
“Writing, I’ve discovered, is a way of being.”
It’s a way of being that suits Hage to the core.
“Always in life I’ve chosen jobs where I don’t have to be accountable to anyone,” he said. “Writing requires solitude, and I like the fact that it’s fairly basic. You don’t need too many tools or complicated logistics.”
Successful writers, however, do need talent and imagination, which Hage has in abundance.
Hage will give a public reading at U of T’s Massey College on Thursday, Jan. 21 at 4 p.m.
