Book Review: Stray Dogs stories by Rawi Hage, published by Alfred A Knopf Canada

 Stray Dogs by Rawi Hage is a collection of 11 stories. Some books supply answers. Stray Dogs provokes questioning. There's much meat on the bone. This book lends itself nicely to being slowly digested in a classroom or by a book club.

Stray Dogs stories

Rawi Hage

Alfred A Knopf Canada

2022

201 pages

short-listed for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize

At six pages "The Whistle" is the shortest story in this collection. Some of the stories are novelette or novella-length. The themes and plot lines are diverse as well. Themes include the role of fate; the resilient human spirit; immigration; and if not the importance of at least the influence of family. Some of the protagonists are photographers. In the author's photo, Rawi Hage is holding a camera--cannily foreshadowing the stories that await the reader. Story location is wide-ranging--Lebanon and France and Poland and Germany and Canada and... The more we learn about people living in other countries the smaller our world becomes. Flip open Stray Dogs and read. It points the way to world peace. 

 

On this blog in November...

Sunday, November 13

It All Started Here by Leanne Dyck

What does the wife of a wealthy grain merchant have to do with my birth?

Sunday, November 20

Writing Tips from 18 Guest Authors

My guest authors generously share writing tips and give insights into their own author journey.

Sunday, November 27

Island Invasion (short story) by Leanne Dyck

This short story was inspired by The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King

photo by ldyck

You: Hey, Leanne, what method do you use to select the books you review?

Me: I follow the same guide that I use when I'm choosing what I 

should write. I'm led by my interest in the story.

And as for when the reviews are published, it's really random. And so I'm amazed when there's a link between the books. For example...

Rawi Hage's 'next contribution will be the book of short stories he began when he first started driving cab in Montreal.'

-Driven: The Secret Lives of Drivers by Marcello Di Cintio

I'm planning to review Driven on Sunday, December 11. Author Marcello Di Cintio spent a year traveling across Canada interviewing cabbies--an extremely interesting community of cabbies, I should add. It's books like Driven that have inspired me to make room on my bookshelf for non-fiction.