Predicaments of an Exile in Rawi Hage’s Cockroach

Abstract

Anglophone Lebanese literature is a unique subcategory by itself where the Lebanese themes, especially the Lebanese Civil War, are discussed and analyzed in English language (Al-Maleh par. 2). Lebanese writers shed light on the psychological and social effects of the war on the Lebanese subjects, exploring many themes such as memory, trauma, identity, and exile. One of the well-known Anglophone Lebanese writers is Rawi Hage, a winner of the Hugh Maclennan Prize for fiction in 2008 and 2012 for his novels Cockroach and Carnival respectively. Hage said in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that he intended to explore through immigration in Cockroach the issues of poverty, alienation, and displacement. This article discusses the novel Cockroach and examines the protagonist’s predicaments through implementing Edward Said’s Orientalism and Reflection on Exiles along with Hommi Bhabha’s notion of in-betweeness, related to its respective theme of exile and the portrayals of the characters’ lives spent outside their homeland.