--- product_id: 8853584 title: "An Unnecessary Woman" price: "$U1092" currency: UYU in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.uy/products/8853584-an-unnecessary-woman store_origin: UY region: Uruguay --- # An Unnecessary Woman **Price:** $U1092 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** An Unnecessary Woman - **How much does it cost?** $U1092 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.uy](https://www.desertcart.uy/products/8853584-an-unnecessary-woman) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A happily misanthropic Middle East divorcee finds refuge in books in a "beautiful and absorbing" novel of late-life crisis ( The New York Times ). Aaliya is a divorced, childless, and reclusively cranky translator in Beirut nurturing doubts about her latest project: a 900-page avant-garde, linguistically serpentine historiography by a late Chilean existentialist. Honestly, at seventy-two, should she be taking on such a project? Not that Aailiya fears dying. Women in her family live long; her mother is still going crazy. But on this lonely day, hour-by-hour, Aaliya's musings on literature, philosophy, her career, and her aging body, are suddenly invaded by memories of her volatile past. As she tries in vain to ward off these emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left. In this "meditation on, among other things, aging, politics, literature, loneliness, grief and resilience" ( The New York Times ), Alameddine conjures "a beguiling narrator . . . who is, like her city, hard to read, hard to take, hard to know and, ultimately, passionately complex" ( San Francisco Chronicle ). A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, An Unnecessary Woman is "a fun, and often funny . . . grave, powerful . . . [and] extraordinary" ( Washington Independent Review of Books ) ode to literature and its power to define who we are. "Read it once, read it twice, read other books for a decade or so, and then pick it up and read it anew. This one's a keeper" ( The Independent ) Review: AN EXCEPTIONAL NOVEL - An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine Reviewed by Arlene Yedid An Unnecessary Woman is a unique novel that tells the story of a cynical woman who exits on her own terms.in her beloved city of Beirut.. At 72, Aaliya has few fond remembrances, having chosen a solitary existance. As narrator of her story, she does not speak much about the Lebanese Civil War; just that she had to sneak across the city’s partition for bread and that the bombing was loud. She doesn’t recount much of the sporadic warfare that has plagued and changed the face of Lebanon. So what is this novel trying to reveal? It is more than a story about a cantankerous, eccentric woman extolling her beloved Beirut. This novel is a portrait of a woman seeking a meaningful existence through literature rather than life. This book, that breathes the rhythm of life through Alameddine’s magnificent prose, is sprinkled with references to favorite authors, books, and music. For some, encountering so many unfamiliar references to authors is off- putting; yet, the vivid storytelling creates a compelling work. If you give up on reading this book, you have lost a treasure. Alameddine is the master of flowing prose. Using Aaliya as narrator could seem limiting; however remembrances pepper the narrative, revealing layers of life-altering episodes. She was forced to marry at the age of 16, and fortunately her difficult husband divorced her 6 months later. While working in a book shop, Aaliya had an extended love affair with a much younger clerk, whose luster dimmed when he became a radical soldier. Aaliya. Is haunted by the death of her close friend Hannah, feeling guilt for ignoring warning signs of impending tragedy. Aaliya is an enigma. She translates books into Arabic, but doesn’t send them to publishers. She has no relationship with her family, but they don’t seem to deserve her respect. Love was never an emotion she felt toward her overly critical mother, whom she felt no guilt for avoiding seeing or rejecting housing her. Eventually, you see an unexpected, touching scene revealing Aaliya’s repressed love toward her indifferent mother. The novel’s climax occurs when she experiences a calamity leading to her neighbors’ unsolicited efforts to help salvage her plight. The old Aaliya would chase them away; perhaps a new Aaliya realizes that she needs to truly live in the moment rather than through a solitary existence.. Rabih Alameddin creates an unforgettable novel in which he proves that Aaliya is not “An Unnecessary Woman.” Review: Beautifully Told - This is my first exposure to Rabih Alameddine. In An Unnecessary Woman,we spend time with Alliyah who has been translating special works of literature into Arabic, just to keep herself busy. Living alone since her husband divorced her in the seventies, self sufficient and unusual, actually extraordinary, more than a modern woman, she's her own woman. She keeps herself to herself in her apartment in Beirut, accompanied by the many volumes and tomes she's translated. She's independent and self sufficient, a self developed scholar with a strong story to tell through her memories, readings, ideas, and observations. She's captivating, profound and funny. This is a one woman show with a stream of consciousness rather than a traditional plot, we spend days with a friend. Never does it feel that we need anyone else's company. Throughout the book you want everyone else to know her as we do. It would be great to read half the books she has translated. This is a great character and like all great characters she's still in my head affecting my point of view. I look forward to this author's other treasures. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #131,325 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #222 in Cultural Heritage Fiction #739 in Sociology Reference #3,316 in Literary Fiction (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.0 out of 5 stars 2,162 Reviews | ## Images ![An Unnecessary Woman - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61LEl32MVUL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ AN EXCEPTIONAL NOVEL *by A***A on June 21, 2016* An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine Reviewed by Arlene Yedid An Unnecessary Woman is a unique novel that tells the story of a cynical woman who exits on her own terms.in her beloved city of Beirut.. At 72, Aaliya has few fond remembrances, having chosen a solitary existance. As narrator of her story, she does not speak much about the Lebanese Civil War; just that she had to sneak across the city’s partition for bread and that the bombing was loud. She doesn’t recount much of the sporadic warfare that has plagued and changed the face of Lebanon. So what is this novel trying to reveal? It is more than a story about a cantankerous, eccentric woman extolling her beloved Beirut. This novel is a portrait of a woman seeking a meaningful existence through literature rather than life. This book, that breathes the rhythm of life through Alameddine’s magnificent prose, is sprinkled with references to favorite authors, books, and music. For some, encountering so many unfamiliar references to authors is off- putting; yet, the vivid storytelling creates a compelling work. If you give up on reading this book, you have lost a treasure. Alameddine is the master of flowing prose. Using Aaliya as narrator could seem limiting; however remembrances pepper the narrative, revealing layers of life-altering episodes. She was forced to marry at the age of 16, and fortunately her difficult husband divorced her 6 months later. While working in a book shop, Aaliya had an extended love affair with a much younger clerk, whose luster dimmed when he became a radical soldier. Aaliya. Is haunted by the death of her close friend Hannah, feeling guilt for ignoring warning signs of impending tragedy. Aaliya is an enigma. She translates books into Arabic, but doesn’t send them to publishers. She has no relationship with her family, but they don’t seem to deserve her respect. Love was never an emotion she felt toward her overly critical mother, whom she felt no guilt for avoiding seeing or rejecting housing her. Eventually, you see an unexpected, touching scene revealing Aaliya’s repressed love toward her indifferent mother. The novel’s climax occurs when she experiences a calamity leading to her neighbors’ unsolicited efforts to help salvage her plight. The old Aaliya would chase them away; perhaps a new Aaliya realizes that she needs to truly live in the moment rather than through a solitary existence.. Rabih Alameddin creates an unforgettable novel in which he proves that Aaliya is not “An Unnecessary Woman.” ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Beautifully Told *by I***N on May 18, 2015* This is my first exposure to Rabih Alameddine. In An Unnecessary Woman,we spend time with Alliyah who has been translating special works of literature into Arabic, just to keep herself busy. Living alone since her husband divorced her in the seventies, self sufficient and unusual, actually extraordinary, more than a modern woman, she's her own woman. She keeps herself to herself in her apartment in Beirut, accompanied by the many volumes and tomes she's translated. She's independent and self sufficient, a self developed scholar with a strong story to tell through her memories, readings, ideas, and observations. She's captivating, profound and funny. This is a one woman show with a stream of consciousness rather than a traditional plot, we spend days with a friend. Never does it feel that we need anyone else's company. Throughout the book you want everyone else to know her as we do. It would be great to read half the books she has translated. This is a great character and like all great characters she's still in my head affecting my point of view. I look forward to this author's other treasures. ### ⭐⭐⭐ An Unpleasant Woman *by E***Y on November 18, 2015* This book is a first person monologue delivered by Aaliyah, a now elderly Lebanese woman who grew up marginalized within her family and married at the age of sixteen to a man who divorced her four years later. She then gets a job in a bookstore, loses herself in books, and devotes herself to translating some of the books she loves into Arabic (not from the originals but from English and French translations of those books). Understandably embittered, she speaks in derogatory terms about her family, her former husband, her community, her neighbors and her culture. An insufferable snob (as one of the other reviewers has noted) she frequently refers fondly to writers and composers (often from central and eastern Europe), while deriding others (ranging from Hemingway to Samuel Beckett). The only people she ever seems too care about are a bookish young man who becomes her lover and then a jihadist, and a sweet but delusory young woman named Hannah (an almost sister in law). For some readers this book may be redeemed by the narrator's bookishness and her sometimes interesting comments on literature and music. But I found that time spent reading this book was time spent in the company of a thoroughly unpleasant woman. The book was redeemed a bit for me by the ending, when her neighbors, who she has been referring to as witches, pitch in to help save her Arabic translations of western literature (the work of a lifetime), from a bathroom flood. Their concern for her work, and their inclination to be impressed by it, give a boost to Aaliyah's very low self esteem, which underlies her alienation and snobbery. At the end she is ready to make direct translations of English and French books into Arabic (a more worthwhile endeavor). So there is a hint of grace in the ending. I would say that the character and the time and place in which she lives have been very fully realized in this book. While respecting the literary achievement, I can't say that I enjoyed the time spent in the company of Aaliyah and her world. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.uy/products/8853584-an-unnecessary-woman](https://www.desertcart.uy/products/8853584-an-unnecessary-woman) --- *Product available on Desertcart Uruguay* *Store origin: UY* *Last updated: 2026-05-28*