Amy Tan

The breathtaking beauty of Alameddine’s prose alone makes this compulsive reading. Its true genius, however, lies in the sacrosanct ideas that the narrator—a translator of books that will never be read—lays bare with humorous irreverence, wry insouciance, or intellectual outrage.  She is fearless in looking at aging and death, the morality of war and survival, and the true meaning of a meaningful life.  She also gives advice on not dying your hair blue in bad light.